Riding the train to Mongolia

Let's not speak too soon, because I am yet to cross the border into Mongolia, but this has been a remarkably simple trip.
The train station was where the hostel receptionist said it would be. The security check was straight forward. The waiting room was easy to find. The nice Swedish diplomat in my carriage agreed to swap top for bottom bunk.
I am always suspicious when things go according to plan. But fingers crossed my next post will not be from a lonely border town platform as I wave to the departing train.
This fear has been created by the tour guide I met at dinner. To suggest the young man was a little jaded by his career choice would be understatement. He at least did not refer to his tour group as "children" like the nice fellow who had joined us earlier...but this was definitely a young man who has travelled this route too many times!
The story he regaled us with, as we ate fairly mediocre pork and canned mushrooms was of the Russian customs officials depositing a group of Thai monks in the border town between Russia and Mongolia. They were apparently in possession of contraband...tramodol he thinks.
So now I am sitting on the train thinking about what might be in my luggage. There's nothing of course...but just walking past those "Declare it!" signs in Australian airports is enough to have me wondering if there might be a stray raisin in the bottoms my bag. Those little beagles make me nervous. The whole process of crossing borders, bring yelled at by men in uniforms in languages I don't speak - it's all terribly stressful.
And on top of that I have to decide whether to sit on the train for three hours while they change the bogeys at the border or to wander around a border town at what will be way, way past my bed time.
What pleasures can a Chinese border town offer? Cheap beer? Drinking at the moment gives me a headache! Cheap food? Everything I eat just passed straight through. I think three hours in the dark, with no air-conditioning doesn't seem do bad.
Stay tuned.