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What a shock to the system, arriving in Beijing China was interesting, we went from a city of 1 million people to 15 million (Ulaanbaatar - Beijing) on the train in a matter of 30 hrs. It sounds like a long time on a train, but it wasn’t really that bad. We both enjoyed having the forced time off, no rushing around seeing things or packing & unpacking.

We were dropped off by Bataa (our Deaf taxi friend), who hung around with us until our train arrived around 7am - & departed at 7.15am. It was nice being able to have a chat to him before we left the country.

The train trip itself was interesting. You are asked to  hand over your train tickets at the start & you don’t get them back til just before you get off, which sorta freaked us out, especially as we were the first ones that he collected tickets from.  All of the train staff were Chinese, except for the staff in the dining car (at least on the Mongolian side of the trip). So we got to practice our Chinese straight away & make absolute idiots of ourselves. We were in Hard-Sleepers, which means that we were sharing our cabin area with 2 other people, a couple of girls (one from Sweden, the other German - both on holidays from Uni. The hard-sleeper was 1/2 the price (129860 Terper) of a soft-sleeper class & it was quite comfortable. We originally tried to get a soft-sleeper, but as we were on the first train to China after Naadam we were pretty lucky to get the Hard-Sleepers & honestly, it wasn’t that bad. There were toilets at either end of the carriage & hot water was available from an urn at the front of the carriage (our end, we were seats 7 & 8, 2nd compartment from the front).

The border crossing was interesting, we went into a sort of lock down at 6.30pm. We had been in the  dining car, enjoying some of our last Mongolian food (we shared a dish) & had hoped to chill out a little longer there, when we were told, the dining car was closed. By the time we got back to our compartment in carriage #1, we couldn’t leave. We went through the Mongolian passport control by about 7pm & we didn’t finish on the Chinese side until after midnight.

The passport control is interesting, they go through the whole train & collect everyone’s passports, then they come back later & give them back stamped.

You knew that  we had crossed into China straight away, there was loud classical music, huge buildings with neon light sign age (in Chinese) & tree’s. When we went through the Chinese immigration (on the train of course again) I was asked to take off my glasses & pose (friggin passport conditions for getting a photo say that you can’t smile or wear glasses, so I had to recreate that image again - I hate passport photos!!!) - seemed to take him ages to agree that it was me. We also had to state our name for him, which was a little different.

We played a game of cards - “Jackass” with Sarah & Sandra through most of the process, which was funny, we all had to swap around a few times, especially when Geoff was ordered to get his bag down & go through a random check of his bag -  his bag is  70 - 90L, so he didn’t  even get to the 1/2 way mark before the guy who asked told him, that was enough - it was just a test.

So what do you think that you would do if you were faced with 2 different widths of track, would you get all the passengers off the train & herd them onto another one OR would you change the wheels? Here they change the wheels - the train pulls up into  a large covered shed, the train is lifted up (very smooth process) & then the wheels are pushed under (not so smooth). The train is jerked forwards & backwards as new carriages are pushed onto the end of the train with the new wheels, somehow though we all managed to get a bit of sleep (except for Geoff, who stayed awake. It was a rather rude awakening at midnight, when we were given back our passports by immigration. My name was called first & my passport thrust in my direction, & apparently I didn’t reach for it fast enough, as my name was called again, rather impatiently - oh well, I am sure that I wasn’t the first.

We didn’t really get a good view of the scenery until the morning & wow, it was really nice. Lots of trees (which I didn’t realise how much I missed them until we traveled through Mongolia) & heaps of crops of corn & other things. The scenery was a bit more mountainous too, which is what I expected to see. It was quite a pleasant train ride. We arrived in Beijing just after 2pm the next day.

Some tips for the train ride, would be;
* Bring some toilet paper, there was some at the start, but that quickly ran out (within 2 hours of departure), I had a large roll so I was set. Oh, the guys seem to pee all over the seat, so be aware of that late at night.
* Bring some tea bags (sugar & milk if you desire) so that you can make tea when you want on the train. You can ask for mugs to use on the train, so no need to bring you own, just make sure that you ask early enough to get some as I don’t know how many they have normally. They don’t give them to you automatically, you must ask. We found some potato flakes that we could use to make potato soup, with a bit of water added + Soy Milk + S&P. Bring some fruit & veg to snack on
*If you don’t bring food, you can get food & cold drinks in the dining car, it serves Mongolian food, whilst you are in Mongolia & Chinese food in China
* You can get your compartment locked by one of the staff if needed, either make friends with whomever you share with & get them to watch your stuff for you or get it locked, never leave everything without anyone there, it will be stolen if you do
* Sheets are free, you will receive a pillowcase + sheets at the start. There are narrow blankets that you can use if needed.
* If you catch the train all the way to Beijing, be prepared for them to start to pack up the sheets, tablecloth, seat covers, carpets etc several hours before you arrive, if you get off at a stop before then, you only have to give them back your sheets & pillowcase + mugs (if you borrowed them) before you get off.
* Before you get to any stops, USE the toilet, you can’t use them when you stop. This is especially worthwhile before you get to the border crossings - over 5hrs without being able to use the toilet is not always easy - they lock the toilets just before a stop.
* Bring entertainment, deck of cards, book, MP3 player etc. There is at least 1x 48V DC power point in each carriage hallway, which you can use to charge things if you need to, grab it quick though.
* Enjoy the scenery, it is amazing on both sides.

After the train
* Do NOT  accept  rides from  people who say that they are Taxi drivers, wait in the line  (which is large) or  walk up the road to find a  real taxi. Taxi’s start at 10Y
* Tuk-Tuks are generally a rip off, you will pay more for a Tuk-Tuk ride than a taxi & you will possible be dumped in the middle of no-where (like we were) & thus have to pay more than you would have if you had just gotten a taxi to start.

Mongolia only have 5 SL Interpreters for between 9 - 13,000 Deaf people. FIVE, & none of them are paid for their work, they have other jobs, sometimes 2 or more, which they do, so that they can interpret. Any spare time that they have, they are interpreting. It’s not about the money, although some payment would obviously help.

One of the Interpreters, interprets the news every night on Mongolian TV.

No offense but how many Interpreters from Western Countries would do the same & interpret so that there is some form of equal access, without thinking of their pocket books. I know that it is hard & you need to make a living to survive, but wow, you can really learn a lot from interpreters like that - it would be great if Sonia could go to an ASLIA National Conference. Needless to say, with only 5 interpreters & no National Accreditation Board for SL Interpreters there opportunities for PD just aren’t there.

I would love to go back there & help out, with whatever I could, even if it was just my time. It would be fantastic if some other countries like Australia could become more involved in helping out countries like Mongolia. The Deaf society, Helping Hands, relies heavily on donations in order to improve the lives of Deaf people in Mongolia & are currently looking for help in trying to raise enough funds for a project to try to have interpreters in the classroom & train new interpreters & standardise MSL. They want to be up to the same standard as they see the rest of the world being at.

There are several artists who come to Helping Hands to dabble in the arts that they enjoy, be it painting or movie making. They used to have computers, which some used for Graphic Arts, but they no longer work. We managed to see a DVD of some of the performances that the Theatre of the Deaf in UB have had & it was really interesting.

I think that western cultures tend to get all caught up in money, which I understand happens because in the end you usually need money for things to get done, but that isn’t how it has to be necessarily. The Deaf theatre for example doesn’t seem to get that much money, yet it still runs, there. We met a couple of Deaf guys who want to have their short films in the the Deaf Short Film Festival & their determination is such, that I eagerly await seeing their films at the Short Film Festival in the USA.

After being  given 2 Sign Language dictionaries, he couldn’t charge me, as they were free to begin with, we had to help out in some way. When we saw all the art that Deaf artists had made, we of course bought one & made a donation to Helping Hands. Just like I had tears in my eyes when I was given the sign language books, out of happiness, it was a similar reaction when we told (the manager of the Helping Hands) that we were making a donation to help him out. It would be great if more people could help out - coming from a western country, we really do have things a lot better than others do.

Wow, what a day, everything just fell into place. I have never been one to believe in a lot of coincidences, but today I did.

I have been trying to find out about the local Deaf community here in Mongolia & thus far have not had any success. At first I used my little Mongolian phrasebook & a lot of mime & gesture, without any success, then I had a note written in Mongolian to say that I was looking for a Sign Language dictionary in Mongolian, again, without much success.

However, I did find a woman that operates a shop that sells Mongolian crafts, who is originally from Ireland (from memory) & she tried to find out some information for me, whilst we went on our 20 day tour. She did find out the name of the shop where you can buy one, but apparently they don’t have any in stock.

We had planned to leave by about 10.30/ 11 to see her again to see if there was any way that I could source a SL book & due to all the rain earlier in the morning (well most of the night too) the streets were flooded, so we were going the long way to avoid the deep puddles of water & just past the State Department Store (outside of the Adidas shop) I saw 2 people signing. Holy shit!!!! Needless to say I was a little excited & tried to converse with them in SL. One man was Deaf the other hearing. After fumbling around with a bit of sign & managing to point to a few phrases in my phrasebook & sign a little, I showed him my paper, which said that I was looking for a Mongolian Sign Language book. He tried to show me on my shitty little tourist map where to go (that whole section was missing from my map) and in the end told us to come with him & he drove us to a Deaf Church, The Sunrise Centre.

We were there for about 3 hours, chatting to everyone. We had a bit of a tour of the building, looked at where the children can play, plus the actual room, where they have church services. They were a congregation of 400, but many people have moved from the city to the country, so there are 200 now. They had a big gym area (basketball court) as well for different social days that happen. Unfortunately, we will miss out on the 2 that are coming up, 18th & 25th July, (our visa’s expire on the 17th & to extend your visa you have to do that 3-4 days before it expires) we catch the train to Beijing on the 16th.

I got to have a look at the 2 Sign Language dictionaries they have. One is a children’s one, with hand drawn colour pictures of what the sign represents, the other is a rather thick dictionary, with photo’s of the signs (so you would need another Mongolian/ English dictionary with it, in order to understand what the sign means. The first one is all Mongolian Sign, the 2nd is a book that was constructed by HH & hearing & it is a mixture of Sign Languages (Korean, Chinese, + 2 others). The only MSL (Mongolian SL) is the alphabet. I really enjoyed learning a bit of sign, I learnt a few things, like how to say; Thank you, My Name ….. , Hi How are you, Good, Camel, Marmot, Gobi Desert, Mongolian, Horse, Turtle etc etc etc. Actually starting to write it down I now realise just how much I learnt.

We were asked if we had seen the BIG Chinggis Khan (40m high) monument just outside the city & when they realised that we had not, we were offered a lift with one of the Mongolian Deaf guys there (sorry I forget everyone’s names). He was a taxi driver (everyone is here really, if you have a car, you take passengers and they pay you). It was T35,000 ($35) to go there & it’s about 60KM out of the city, so not bad really + he even bought us some water on the way. Our driver had been to Australia about 5 years ago, he went to Sydney for a Judo championship, he couldn’t remember a lot of Auslan, but we managed to converse in a combination of International SL, Auslan, MSL + ASL. It was so nice to be interpreting again too, I did it for Geoff & also for our driver/ guide. I had a couple of interesting experiences with interpreting for our driver. We watched a video about the monument when we were there that had (limited) English captions, but nothing in Mongolian, so Interpreted that for our driver (so it went from Mongolian to English to SL), then we went to a Museum (located underneath the statue) & we had a woman that worked there who spoke some English (she was Mongolian) & she guided us around & I interpreted for our guide/ driver in SL too (even voiced back). Wow, what an amazing day. So nice to be interpreting again too - it was just so amazing!!

It had to be one of the best days & so nice to be able to communicate so well too, which we haven’t really had very much of since we arrived here. I felt so comfortable (& so did Geoff) conversing in SL - it was awesome.

I have to say a BIG Thanks to John Uri for the refresher in some ASL signs, that came in handy. It was really cool that we could fall back on the ASL alphabet to converse in as well. Their English was amazing, I wish that my Mongolian was 1/2 as good.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is our last day in Mongolia. We have arranged to meet up with everyone again (2pm) & hopefully I will even get a MSL dictionary. Can’t wait….

Like most days, today was another interesting one.

We went to Naadam with Fatine & her daughter, Sophia (9) whom we met on our trip & are now staying at Kongor Guest House, the same as us & grossly underestimated how long it would take to get to the stadium for Naadam.

By the time that we found our gate, it was 11am, the time that the ceremony started & we discovered that it was going to be bit of a task to get in & find a seat. They oversell the seats, so it’s more of a first come first serve basis, we should have arrived an hour earlier. When we thought that we might not even see much of the ceremony we didn’t really understood how persistent Mongolians can be at a Naadam. We were caught in a crush to get in, which was ok, when we were being pushed up the stairs, it was the stairs leading downwards at the top that were the ultimate problem. I ended up falling down the stairs (which was a bit of a tumble), but a few people helped me up, which was nice (them helping me, not the fall). Oh well, all part of the experience.

When we bought the tickets we asked for undercover & ended up seated in the open with the locals, unfortunately behind the stage, so lots of pictures feature backs of heads, but we did get a good view of a couple of bloopers that happened through the opening ceremony. One funny moment was a sky diver, who landed & took out a few of the dancers in the field & caused a bit of a commotion. There were a few really cool things, like the archers on horseback, shooting targets inside a stadium, with spectators close by & those doing tricks on horseback jumping on & off whilst galloping along. My favorite was the heavy rock song about Chinggis Khan.

After the opening ceremony we watched the wrestling, it was the first of 6 rounds (maybe more?) - it was a pitiful event to watch. There are no weight divisions, so mostly it was fat guys falling on/ flinging skinny guys to the ground & some of them were almost sumo size. It actually seemed to be mostly professional wrestlers who were fat & the skinny guys were from the army. At least it gave me a chance to eat some food & we found an awesome nestea pear drink - yum!

After that we went over to the Archery stadium & watched a bit of the mens & womens competition. The men shoot from a a slightly farther distance than the woman, who shoot from (roughly about) 5 metres in front of them, at the same time - it’s a little weird to see. There are spectators that can view the competition from the side (not more than 1-2 metres away) and the judges stand near the target (which are little round leather and ….) that sit on the ground, the object is to hit them & knock them down. It’s a little weird to be able to watch an archery competition so close to the action & yet no-one seems to get hurt. The arrow heads are not sharp, they look like a rubber tip, but I am sure that it would still hurt if you were shot by one.

We left the archery as it started to rain & went in search of shelter, which we never really found. WE also didn’t find the anklebone tent either, but such is life. We actually came across a small Naadam whilst traveling around the countryside, so we have seen some of the events already, like the Wrestling, Archery (which we took part in) and Anklebone Competition, which was quite cool. At least we had more of an idea of what to expect and some of the rules of the games when we went to the Naadam today.

Tomorrow we head off to see the horse racing, we need to leave by 8am to drive into the countryside, then after the race, we will come back for some more wrestling & the closing ceremony - I think that we will try to get there a lot earlier to ensure that we have seats.

Well, we are back in UB again. Tomorrow we head to the biggest festival in Mongolia, the Naadam Festival. Wow, what a difference it makes to be back in UB with Naadam happening. There are so many tourists, you can’t walk more than a few metres up the street or anywhere else & you come across another tourist here for the festival. When we first arrived in UB there were still a few tourists about, but nothing like this - it’s kinda weird now. I think that it was good that we saw a few things before we went on our tour, as parts of UB have been re-decorated - lots of traditional Mongolian souvenirs and the like about the place. A great example of that happening, was when we went to the State Department Store to get some money (had to pay the remainder owed for our tour + our train ticket to Beijing & Naadam tickets) & noticed that the car they had displayed in the perfume/ jewelery section had been removed & there was now a display of Mongolian tradition clothing. In fact the store had been cleaned up a bit & reorganised (there are 5 floors) in general, - the changes were quite noticeable.

The vibe at the guest house is a little different too, lots of newbies (we are the old hands, which is a little weird), perhaps it is because there are a few older people here too, but it’s just not quite as happening as it was when we first arrived (we were here for a couple of days, before heading out into the countryside).

Apparently most things close down over the next couple of days (including the Black Market) - it’s a 3 day holiday. There are 2 days for the Naadam & the 3rd day is for the locals to get over their hangovers. I think that the State Department Store will remain open, but from what we can gather from the locals, not too much more as far as shops go.

FYI - The State Department Store is kinda the one stop shop, it’s a bit like a Sears (for the Canadians) or a really weird ass Myers (for the Aussies, but a bit more dodgy) + a grocery store + liquor shop + gym + bank ++++. It’s not the cheapest place to shop in UB, but it is convenient (it’s 2 blocks from our guest house, Kongor)

Our car is being fixed - we have been dropped off at an internet cafe whilst that’s happening - they reckon it will take about an hour or so to fix - must be pretty bad if the driver can’t fix it. He has fixed numerous flat tyres (we had 4 in the first 4 days, one involved a spanner from a motorbike that was buried deep in the tyre), whilst driving through the Gobi, the car overheated a few times (we had 40+ days) & every night Jarrod (our driver - that’s what his name sounds like) tunes up the car, making sure that it’s ready for the next day. We even met another guy in the Gobi who had a hole in his radiator, which Jarrod & a couple of the other drivers repaired no worries.

Traveling through Mongolia has been interesting. We left UB (Ullaanbaatar - who knows what the real spelling is) on Monday the 21st of June, which makes today Day 10 of our 20 day tour. So happy that we have had a driver, driving through UB is interesting, pedestrians have no rights on the road (cross at your own peril - not joking - they actually speed up when you cross the road - horns blaring) & the drivers are fairly aggressive, no one really lets anyone else in, unless you are fortunate enough to block someones path & even then they tell you how annoyed they are by leaning on their horn. The driver spends most of his time maintaining the car & when you have break downs often, that is a good thing that you have someone who knows a bit about his car. We are in a Russian Jeep, so it’s quite basic, I still have trouble with the no seat belts thing (sometimes you wish you did have them when you are bouncing about the backseat, just to hold you in - we have bumped our heads numerous times, all part of the experience.

They had a rather harsh winter & many of the livestock died, do a search & you can find quite a few articles about it (here is one). We haven’t visited a family yet that has not been affected. One family lost all their yaks & sheep & now only have a few goats left. It’s been interesting to see the devastation, you can’t help but feel for them. They are such a hospitable & happy group of people, willing to give anything that they have, even when that isn’t always very much to help another.

The food has been interesting here, lots of meat & dairy. The meat can be a little gristly & fatty with very little meat content to it, which wasn’t really what I was expecting (more of the big juicy steaks was what I had in mind). They cook with copious amounts of oil too, in one week we went through a 1L bottle of oil (& our cook/ guide was being conservative with her use of oil for our food), the driver pours oil (on his already cooked food) like it was tomato sauce, yet he isn’t fat. In fact most Mongolians are not fat at all, despite a diet consisting of mostly fattening foods (fatty meat with heaps of oil & dairy). They only really eat dairy in the summer, in the winter they live on meat.

They sometimes slaughter a goat or sheep to eat in the summer, but they mostly eat dried meat through the summer & fresh in the winter. They kill animals for their meat & then dry it for 4-5 months (over winter), which obviously makes it a bit easier as the meat can’t be refrigerated in the summer. Speaking of the lack of refrigeration for meat, we went to the black market (which is just a market that has anything & everything that you might want to buy) at Arvaikeer City 4 days ago & we are still eating the meat that was bought then, so I have decided to go vegetarian as much of this trip as possible. You can buy tinned ham for $12 in UB & wow, I dream of that ham everyday….

Fruit and veg is fairly limited, you can find.. cabbage, carrot, onion, potato, cucumber, tomato & apples are fairly regularly. Garlic seems to be harder to get, but it can be found at the markets (even if only one person sells it), we found ginger at the state department store in UB, but no-where else. A lot of the prepackaged food is from Russia, Germany, Holland, Italy & Mongolia of course, so reading ingredients has been a bit hit & miss, usually the European food has English ingredients.

Ok, car is fixed, have to leave it there…

First of all, if you have noticed that the spelling for Ullaanbaatar keeps changing it’s because there are about 10 different ways to spell the city name, there doesn’t really seem to be one Official spelling of it, so I change the spelling depending on what I have seen recently.

Already this morning we have organised our tour & met our driver, Jerrod & Guide/ English Interpreter, Erika & checked out our Russian Jeep that we will be spending a lot of time in over the next 20 days/ 3 weeks. We have also done some laundry. Now we are headed to the Black Market & to check out some of the local shops for some supplies, like Binoculars & Lithium AA Batteries (which thus far have been very hard to find). I am also going to try again to find a Mongolian Sign Language dictionary, not sure how much luck I will have though.

So far no luck with pictures, getting a blog up without photo’s is proving to be hard enough, but hopefully I will get some up soon.

Our trip to the black market went well. We walked most of the way, catching a bus in between for all of 20cents, which saved our legs a bit. When we go back after our trip around the countryside I think that we will try to workout what bus will actually take us all the way to the market.

We ended up at a market next to the Black Market (didn’t realise until after-wards) where Geoff bought a watch & a belt. We don’t really have any high hopes for the watch, but hopefully we can get some sort of value out of the alarm that it has, as my current watch doesn’t have an alarm & we thought that it might be of use to have one, especially when you have to get up early in the morning to be somewhere.

The Black Market was pretty busy & we definitely felt like more of an oddity there. There is an entrance fee of 5 cents (50T) to get in & the market is enormous. We didn’t get to see everything, but they had anything that you could possibly want … anything from toilet paper & other toiletries, cleaning products, camping gear, any sort of clothing that you could want or need, including shoes (OMG we were so sick of shoes and clothes), Ger supplies (you could build your own), horse tackle, plumbing supplies & heaps of tools (anything you could want), furniture (couches, wardrobes, beds, fridges, vanities..) mounds of different fabrics (silk is very popular) fruit and veg, meat, + all the dairy products you could imagine, without any real refrigeration. They even had pets for sale too, rabbits seemed to be popular, we even found some fish, snails, turtles and kittens.

The furniture was interesting, some of the couches were just a wooden frame with a bit of foam & fabric attached, even some of the mattress’s were the same. We didn’t have any issues with pick-pockets, like the locals had warned us (we had a few that tried to talk us out of going) it’s just a trip that you have to do. As long as you are vigilant, and know where your belongs are etc, then you are fine.

Crossing the street here is a bit of an effort, pedestrians have no rights really, cars speed up when you cross and a green light for you to cross means nothing to them. Apparently it is one of the more dangerous things that you can do whilst you are here -I absolutely hate it. The curbs are very high too (at least a foot is standard), there is no such thing as access for disabled people who might be in a wheelchair.

The days are very long here too, I haven’t woken up earlier than 6am, but the sun is already up at that time & it starts to set by about 9.30 & by 10/ 10.30 its pretty much gone down.

Tomorrow we depart at 9am & start our 20 day journey around Mongolia, so internet access will be pretty much non-existent during that time, we should be back on the 10th of July at Khongor Guest House, so I will have a lot of posts to catch up on. The Naadam festival is on the 11th & 12th as well, so it will be a little busy when we get back. should be good fun though.

After a rather interesting shower – the cord for the shower head has a hole in it, so there was more water coming out of the cord area than the actual shower head (Geoff managed to get it working a bit better by the time he had his shower) – at least the water was nice & warm, we headed down for breakfast.

Apparently breakfast is included in the price of accommodation, so I wandered down with Geoff to see what was being served – basically it was bread, & the condiments where butter and jam – not a chance in hell that I could eat that. I asked Tooro (pronounced Toorok), who is the manager of the guesthouse if he could translate my allergies into Mongolian, which he happily did & then we headed out to the State Department Store to find the ATM that we had been told was there.

We did eventually find the ATM on level 5, tucked behind the computer area & got some cash – we had to do a couple of withdrawals to get the right amount of cash – it was hard to tell how much you could withdrawal in one transaction, still don’t know. At least you had the option of Mongolian or English as your language of choice when using the machine. It was interesting wandering through the department store, which was like a run-down Sears (sorry to the Aussies – nothing really like it in OZ). They had a huge bookshop on the 6th level with heaps of dictionaries & with my limited amount of Mongolian (mostly finding words in the phrasebook pointing & gesturing (because every time I try to say something in Mongolian I just get a look of what the hell did you just say) I attempted to find a sign language book. The closest that they had was a point & speak picture book, but there is more time to look. I saw the coolest leather jacket (like a tailored trench coat, mid length style) for about $200, which wasn’t bad really, quite a good price & that was from a big department store. We also found a rather extensive range of safes (which was amusing) & camping gear, plus our Solomon shoes, which was kinda cool too. We bought a little bum bag, for me to wear so that I can put my epi-pens, camera & a little bit of cash inside too, in preparation for our Black Market adventure whilst we were there.

On the first floor they have a grocery store, which is stocked with all sorts of weird & interesting foods, I found chips (like Pringles) & lollies (candy) from Germany that I could eat, chocolate from Hungary (dirt cheap at $1 a block), Juice from Mongolia plus some Mongolian beef stew with rice (which I swear tasted like lamb & the ingredients didn’t include the carrot, onion & cabbage that I found in the tin, so I have learned that they don’t always state everything in the ingredients). I also found stewed mutton from Mongolia (tinned) rice of course & there are heaps of tinned veggies & fresh fruit & veg. However, we had received a tip from some of the other backpackers that you don’t buy your fruit & veg from the supermarkets or other shops, you buy it on the street & you will save at least ½ the price.

The trip to the supermarket took us a few hours, but at least we found some stuff that I could eat, which was encouraging. After there we went back to our guest house & spoke to Toroo about our trip around Mongolia. He seemed to have a good grasp of my allergies & it seems that they will happily accommodate me, but we have to speak to our tour guide Sunday at 10am to finalise a few things. I am not sure that I will get to ride a reindeer, although there is a reindeer festival happening from the 1-4th of July at Khuvsgul Lake, where I might be able to, for a price. The reindeer that I wanted to see you need to ride on horseback for 5 days to get to & I just don’t think that I can do it, plus we have to be back in Ullaanbaatar on the 10th for the Naadam Festival on the 11th of July & with us leaving on Monday that would give us exactly 20 days.

We have discovered that whilst the lonely planet guidebook can have some good information, there are some gaps & many of the places that they talk about in the book, do not exist anymore. We tried to find the Korean Sushi Restaurant – Mokran Pyongyang Restaurant, which boasted ½ price sushi platters on the weekend (normally $10, down to $5) but after wandering up & down streets for ages & even coming across some other guys that we knew from the backpackers that were looking for it as well, we couldn’t find it. In the end we gave up (they kept looking for food) and got some more things from the State Department Store & had something back at our hostel.

A funny thing happened when I was waiting for Geoff to take some pictures of a truck watering the plants alongside the road, a local came up & asked me where I was from, I told him Australia, not sure that he understood, as he then asked if I was from China or Russia, to which I said No. He then hit me on the back (not a pat) & clipped me across the back of the head & then walked off. Apparently the Mongolians hate the Chinese & Russians, so maybe it was a friendly gesture, but there was a bit of force behind it.

We had a pleasant surprise when we got back to our room & turned on the TV for the first time, Hot Fuzz was on & it was even in English, so that was a nice way to chill out a bit, before we went down & made some food in the kitchen & watched the Australia V Ghana game (draw).

I must admit that I was not really that well prepared for what to expect in Mongolia. It was interesting standing in the line to go through immigration & workout that there was only one other girl (traveling alone) who looked like she was western (we thought eastern European). Standing in the queue was interesting, although there was a bit of a queue thing happening, there were still people jumping in where they could. I must admit that I kind of wished that I had some Asian balls, instead of being very Western in my behaviour. I do suspect that I will soon learn to grow a pair & just push in when the opportunity arises, simply out of necessity over the coming months. I will probably just get the hang of it & then have to be rehabilitated to Western standards again.

It was really nice having organised some accommodation for our arrival at Khongor Guest House. They had someone come to collect us. The car was a left hand drive Toyota sedan of some description that was a little beat up & (going down a hill) reached a maximum of 50 km/h. They have a mixture of left and right hand drive cars here, which is interesting to see, not sure which they have more of to be honest, but they do drive on the right hand side of the road. The drive from the airport was interesting, there was a huge queue of cars outside the airport that our driver weaved past, which turned out to be heaps of cars that were left parked in the middle of the road. We soon learned that stop signs are more of a guide, you only stop if you have to, in fact I was sure that the guy driving sped up a little bit more, there definately wasn’t any stopping happening there. We were passed a few times by other cars, which was interesting, as they don’t really seem to care if there is oncoming traffic close at hand, somehow they get in just in time.

You can see the Russian/Communist influence here, there is a big Soviet Power station on the way in, not to mention the buildings. Khongor Guest House is in an old Russian apartment style building, every door pretty much has a lock on it too. The funny thing is that the door outside (which I think remains open permanently) has the key code painted on the wall. We went up a couple of flights of stairs to the office area & main communal area to get keys for our room & then we headed up a couple more flights through a locked door on the stairs to a another locked door that took us to our room, which was also locked. There is a safe in every room too to lock your stuff in as well, so in total we have 4 keys.

The signs on the door were interesting to say the least “Please be careful If an unknown person who knocks the door and says that he is a plumber or technician, please do not open the door. Always close the door hardly” & the other one says “Attention Please be very careful when traveling around Ullaanbaatar at especially at night. Keep your eyes on your belongings all the time (eg carry your bags in front of you) & keeping your passports, documents in safety box is strongly suggested as there are many thief in the city”.

It was actually quite late when we arrived, but we stayed up & met some of the other backpackers there & a couple of the guys from Belgium mentioned the Black Market (Naran Tul Market) & their visit earlier in the day. They had gone there to buy a few things for their upcoming tour around Mongolia & had pick-pockets trying to get things from their back pockets within minutes. They don’t seem to go for the front pockets, just the back. They had their bum-bags slung across their shoulders so that the bag was across their chests & didn’t have any worries with that, it was just the constant diving into their back pockets that they noticed.

I am sure that at some stage we will get that happening, but we are both going to try to ensure that they don’t get anything …. see what happens.