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Hi everyone,
Sorry it has been a while since I last did a blog entry....we have been up to so much that its a rather daunting task and also finding enough time to sit down and recall the past week or so's events has been hard!
Well since my last entry we left Irkutsk and got the train to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. This time the train was quite empty and we got a cabin to ourselves. The usual activities of cards, eating and sleeping went on but it was a painful border crossing - taking 8 hours from start to finish! We arrived in Ulaanbaatar the next morning (Mon 10th) very early to find we didn't have anyone to greet us! We waited inside the train station for a good couple of hours until the next train direct from Moscow arrived. We then found our guide who appologised perfusely for not knowing the correct train we were on. It was also a pleasant surprise to be joined by 2 couples - Eric and Kathryn (from OZ) and Graham and Sue (Ex pats living in the Pyrenees). After being taken to a hotel to shower and then somewhere else to have breakfast we had a walking tour of Ulaanbaatar. We saw a few sights - the main square and a Monastary as well as a standing Buddha. There wasn't too much to see in the city and we weren't overly impressed especially as there seemed to be no rules for drivers to let pedestrians cross the road! We risked our lives everytime we crossed the road!!! We were then taken by our guide for some lunch - which was a completely surreal experience.
Four courses later Naki (the guide) presented us with a bottle of vodka. We each had to have a shot and then he took us into the Karaoke room. He sung 'Let it be' to us and then a couple of Mongolian songs and it was just hilarious and just the weirdest thing to hear the Beatles being sung by a Mongolian! We were all very entertained so I suppose Naki succeeded in his aim! He was very hospitable and the most friendly guide so far. He is very keen to move to London to improve his english and we all agreed he would be eaten alive! After lunch we were taken on a short drive into the countryside to the east of the city to a Ger Camp. We expected to be staying with families but it was exclusively for tourists. 4 or 5 gers at this time of year along with 2 joined together to form a dining area. There was no running water and the toilets consisted of a wooden shack with a floor board removed - literally a hole. It was all good fun though and none of us managed to fall down!
Overall we spent 2 nights at the camp - the first night was quite quiet - we were all tired so dinner and then straight to bed. The next day we did some horseriding which was really fun until our extremeties went numb in the freezing weather!!!! We tried our hand at some archery too but i was crap!!! Then in the afternoon we went to visit a nomad family who had set up their ger nearby. We were treated to some milk tea, biscuits and some butter/cheese thing straight from one of their cows. Was strangely delicious. Back at the ger camp we had dinner and played the ankle bone game. It was really fun! Basically a load of sheep ankle bones which you have to roll. There are 4 sides which are named camel, sheep, horse and goat if i remember correctly? The aim is to roll camels (which is the hardest) to complete the 20 or so steps from start to finish. We were told the winner would have a prize and having got to know Naki we suspected that this may be a bit dodgy! He seemed obsessed with telling us about the spots in Ulaanbaater where prostitues hung out or where couples would go and 'cuddle in sleeping bags!!!'. Also I made the mistake of saying i had read that Mongolians eat testicles and just wanted to make sure we weren't going to have any served up! Well that started him off! Every animal he saw after that - whether it be a dog or horse he would comment on the size of their testicles! It became a bit of a running joke! Anyway back to the evening. Well Graham won, and his prize was as suspected not a treat! He had to act out animals that we called out, some examples were dog, kangeroo and hyena! Very entertaining and a very good sport! The rest of the night then becomes a bit hazy for me! I'm sure sam and karl will update their blogs at some point with the sordid details - there is also video and photographic evidence so you can see. The 7 of us managed to polish 4 bottles of vodka off but i can't remember a single thing of the night past the 2nd bottle! We didn't have mixers as such, more one shot of vodka to one shot of coke!! There are many photos of me lying on the ground and being held up but thats all i can tell you! I woke up in the night not knowing where i was and was sick into a bucket. When i woke up in the morning I was covered in the stuff - my hair, clothes and bed were completely soiled and I was then filled in by Karl and Sam that they had had to put me to bed and I started to be sick on myself before they could roll me over! Feeling fine we headed to breakfast only to enjoy it all over again 20 minutes later....and i believe the camp dog enjoyed it after me!!! Such a disgrace! I spent the whole journey back to Ulaanbaatar asking the driver of the mini-bus to pull over so I could be sick. When we arrived at the hotel I went straight to bed and stayed there until dinner whilst everyone else enjoyed a free day sightseeing in Ulannbaatar. Eventually got up just before dinner, was sick again, then managed to stomach some dinner. We went to an Uzbec restaurant with Naki and I tried horse meat! My appetite wasn't up tp much so I didn't eat it all but was very tasty! That night we stayed in a 4* hotel in Ulaanbaater which was really nice before getting up early to go to the train station to get the train to Beijing. My last memory of Ulaanbaater was Rihanna being blasted out of a massive tv screen mounted on the train walls!
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