A friend and I went to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, in June ’13. We flew in through Beijing. Big mistake! We found the Beijing Daxing International Airport architecturally amazing, but it was massive, with little signage and few people who spoke English.
We flew in from San Francisco on United Airlines but had been unable to get our boarding passes in San Francisco for the Beijing-Ulaanbaatar leg of the trip. When we got to Beijing, we looked for the MIAT Mongolian Airlines booth to check in for our flight.
We eventually found transit signs that led us out of the airport proper and into the MIAT ticketing area, but there was no place to sit and wait, and the MIAT counter didn’t open for another three hours. (We were scheduled for a 6-hour layover.)
Eventually, someone showed up and we got our passes and reentered the airport proper to find a more comfortable place to wait.
The trip home was through Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. It was beautiful, amazingly clean and very well lit, with excellent signage. What a difference!
I’ll avoid the Beijing airport, when possible.
ANN VERCOUTERE
Greenbrae, CA
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