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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.

Friday was our last day in Seoul, Korea. We got up in the morning, had our showers & started to pack – it was amazing to discover just how much of Steve’s stuff was actually in our room, I think that we had everything except a couple of bits of clothing (his pack, wallet, notebook & even the clothes that he had worn on Thursday were in our room). After much fluffing about, not by me, I was packed & ready by 8.30am – they took until 10.30 (check out time) to finish packing – we checked out, put our bags in storage (Steve took his back to his room) & headed out. We wandered some of the back streets, which was really interesting & eventually found ourselves at the same 7eleven we had been to the day before & bought some food.

I have a habit (which is very useful) of photographing everything that I eat, which is a very useful resource to refer back to, especially when you don’t know the language. At least you can pull out your camera & point. I had all the same sushi that I had the day before (0.50C ea) but this time I had 8, instead of 4, plus I got some tomato juice. The guys got some dessert bready things & yoghurt + Steve got some Pocca Sweat (it’s an energy drink – love the name). We then found a park to sit in & ate. It was an interesting park, seemed to be a hang out for all the men. There were heaps of men lined up outside the park, along the wall, either sitting (on a piece of newspaper, never directly on the ground) or standing around. Inside the park, there were heaps of men spread around, not a woman in sight. We got a few looks, perhaps just because we were western, or perhaps it also had something to do with that we were eating in the park (sitting down, just like you do in Japan) & for a while I thought that maybe it was a men only area, but later a couple of women wandered through, so I was feeling a bit better, but I did get the feeling that it was unusual that females hang about there.

From our “breakfast” stop, which kinda turned out to be a bit of a lunch stop, we wandered through the market area of Anguk Station. They had some pretty cool shops, it was nice to wander through there again after being there about 8 years ago. Geoff & I were even accosted by a girl interviewing foreigners about France selling off property to foreigners & was asked for his opinion, they wanted to interview me too, but I told them that there wasn’t much point as I had the same perspective as Geoff.

After that we wandered past the bus stop to find out which bus we would need to catch so that we arrived at the airport on time & worked out that we could catch the 3.30 or 3.50pm bus & checked out the gear shop nearby – we found a couple of cool lightweight tshirts on sale for $10 ea (10,000 Won) but thought that we might get them when we came back to catch the bus later. We wandered up to Changgyeonggung Palace, a National World Heritage site & by this stage I was not doing too well, in fact I ended up vomiting just outside in the garden. We found a place in the shade to sit for a while & contemplate what to do, if not for the fact that you had to pay to get in, I probably would have wandered through & sat down in the shade inside. The guys decided to wander back to the backpackers, which was awesome, at least it was air-conditioned, we hung out for an hour & a half & then headed off to the airport.

My big black bag for my backpack has suffered a little from the trip & has some decent holes in it, so the bus ride was spent stitching up a couple of the bigger holes – there are still about 8 to be repaired though…. I was pretty happy that we got the bus that we did, not long after we got onto the bus it started to bucket down with rain – because of all the smog it is actually quite hard to see any clouds that might give a hint that rain is soon to come, so when it started to bucket down it was a bit of a shock. There was so much rain that the water on the road was spraying up past the windows, much like you would see on a boat in rough weather – it was kinda cool. However, when we retrieved our big backpacks from under the bus all that water didn’t seem so cool … my bag was VERY wet.

There wasn’t much that we could do about the wet bag, as we had to catch our flight. Seoul airport is quite huge & we managed to go in the opposite direction (apparently the domestic area is at one end, & international at the other). It took us a little while to get ourselves checked in, apparently there weren’t any seats that we could have together, so we were one row apart 51F & 52F, which was a bit of a bummer. They ask that you wait around for 5 minutes until your checked bags clear security, so we did that (probably waited 10-15min), it was fantastic that they did, because we may have had some prohibited items (I swear I saw shampoo in their little display of forbidden items, as well as sealants). After we checked in & went through a security check with our carry on baggage (I still haven’t been pulled up about my epi-pens in my bag), we headed through immigration, where they stamp your passport & ticket to say that you have departed & headed towards the gate (9), kinda cool that we weren’t up the other end of the airport, as we would have had to catch a train to the gate. I know that sounds pretty mundane, but somewhere between immigration & the shops near gate 7, where I stopped to get some photo’s I lost my ticket - FUCK!!! At least it was my ticket & not my passport I guess…. but it was 15 min before we were due to leave, so it was pretty screwed up to lose it.

I ran back the same way that I had come & tried to see if my ticket was on the ground, but I couldn’t find it - FUCK FUCK FUCK!!! I had left Geoff behind & just hoped that he would stay where I left him. I found an information desk, where there was a woman sitting down, but it turns out she was a local & didn’t know what the hell I was rabbiting on about, so I saw a couple of girls at a shop selling perfume & thought “I hope they speak English” as I ran up & told them that I had lost my ticket & needed to find it, where do I go? They directed me to an information desk, which I again ran up to & found a HUGE queue of people waiting to be served - CRAP!!! A guy came up after me & joined the queue holding a ticket in his hand & I got a little excited & asked if he had found it, which amused him, I told him that I had lost mine & our flight was due to leave soon & my husband was going to be so disappointed if we didn’t catch this flight. He said that he was going to Manila, & asked where I was going, I told him, we were going to Mongolia & he said that he had been there many times for work & that we would love it. Then I was at the front of the queue & asked the woman there if she had, had a ticket handed in, but she didn’t & told me to go to the Korean Air desk upstairs, which I did quickly.

Once there, they were a little amused that I had lost my ticket so close to the departure time & even more amused that Geoff wasn’t sitting next to me, which I found amusing because he wasn’t even there with me, so I assume that they saw two same surnames & were a little perplexed, I quickly explained that there weren’t any available seats together when we checked in & she seemed to accept that pretty well & gave me my re-issued ticket (which she wrote on to say that it had been re-issued as I didn’t have the immigration stamp on this one). The guy that I had met earlier that was going to Manila was at the ticket counter the same as me, trying to buy another ticket for a friend & had a chat to me part of the way back to the gate. Apparently he works with eco-friendly housing & does a lot of travel with his work. He spends a lot of time in Mongolia for work, mostly during the winter, which is a little harsh (we later found out that there is only one power station still running & when that one breaks during the winter, if they can’t get it up & running quickly, there is no power for the rest of the season, until Spring when the pipes thaw & that happens reasonably frequently).

I found Geoff where I left him when I discovered the missing ticket & filled him in on where I had been as we headed to our gate (9), where we discovered that the flight was delayed due to having to wait for a connecting flight, so we went & bought some food with the last of our Won (whilst Geoff does collect money, we are trying not to collect too many coins, besides you only need one of each one, right).

When we got onto the plane a nice man, that was sitting next to me swapped seats with Geoff so that Geoff and I could sit together, which was really nice. We later found out that he was actually traveling with the other 2 men in the same row. They were from Korea & were going to Mongolia, as many Koreans descend from the  Mongols. It was nice to have a meal (fruit platter) in which I could eat everything that they gave me (no extra stuff like yoghurt or bread rolls, as per usual). I enjoyed the last of my sushi from Korea too on the flight as well, now to try Mongolian food….

Well Korea has been a good way to get used to Asia again. The flight over was good, although I think that I started to de-stress, which is why I am now sick. My nose was running constantly (must have used 1-2 boxes of tissues on the flight) & generally felt miserable. Before we got on the flight, we checked into my meal & managed to change it to a fruit platter (after much negotiation), which was pretty cool.

Unfortunately we didn’t have our own individual entertainment systems, so we had to try to watch what we could on a screen that was about 8 rows ahead & off to the side. As we were flying with Korean Air, language was a bit of an issue. Anything that was subtitled in English was pretty hard to read as the English was tiny (even smaller than the Korean subtitles). It was funny to hear the announcements on the plane, the Koreans obviously knew a lot more about what was happening, than anyone who spoke English. There was a little bit of turbulence on the flight, so getting food and drink service was dragged out both times that they came out to serve everyone.

It was 23C when we arrived & “Cloudy” (otherwise known as SMOG). As we are only here in Korea for a couple of days & we have been fairly busy with getting stuff sorted before we left, we neglected to learn any phrases in Korean (to be fair though, we haven’t even learned any phrases in Mongolian or Chinese - where we are spending a vast majority of our time), something that we wished we had done. Quite a few people speak a bit of English. Those who don’t have been amused with a lot of mime & gesture (and some actual sign language) that I have used & sometimes it actually works. Trying to convey that we needed to go Banana Backpackers was interesting….

We caught the bus into Seoul, it was only $9 each. We had a few taxi drivers that tried to convince us that the buses weren’t running & that we couldn’t take any luggage on them, despite the fact that we were at the bus stop area & there were about a dozen buses parked there loading peoples luggage on them. The bus trip was cool, they had the news on & guess what, they had a (male) Korean Sign Language interpreter doing the news - how cool. We got some video, which we will try to upload to you tube, however, we were at the back of the bus, so the quality is questionable.

We met up with Geoff’s brother, he met us at the bus stop at Anguk & we walked to Banana Backpackers, where we dumped our bags (in our double room with shower & toilet). I did get a little excited about having a flush toilet & used it, putting the toilet paper in the bowl & flushing as per normal, it wasn’t flushing. I called out to Geoff & Steve & Steve asked if there was a bin next to the toilet & I found out that you are not supposed to flush anything down the loo. Luckily I had only had a pee, so retrieving the toilet paper from the bowl was not as disgusting as it could have been, but still, once you do that, I don’t think that you readily forget that quickly. At least it isn’t a squat toilet, you can even drink the water here, which is pretty cool too.

Steve had made friends with Ivano, from Italy earlier in the day, so were were introduced & all four of us went to dinner. We found a girl that spoke pretty good English & explained my allergies (as I forgot the translation that we had done by Richard, who worked with Geoff (US office)). We kinda freaked her out, she was really helpful, but it was very obvious that she was soooo scared that I was going to die. She checked up on my regularly & triple checked ingredients in everything, she even came to make sure that we were ok before she went home. I tried some Kim Chi, which was ok, I liked it, but I couldn’t eat a big bowl of it.

Yesterday, we went on the DMZ tour with Korridor tour group. They had free internet access at the USO office (where the tour leaves from) & they even had a printer, so I managed to print out my allergy translation (from Richard) & freak out a few people through the day, it was great to have it though. The DMZ tour was interesting, it was a full day tour, full of propaganda & confusion. On the propaganda side, everything was the North Koreans fault, honestly it was laughable after a while. I am sure that the South Koreans are conveyed similarly by the North Koreans. Our tour guide was very confusing, she could speak some English, but not quite well enough. For example, we were told “leave your passports on the bus, but you need them” - how confusing, that was just the start. Then I explained my allergies & showed my piece of paper & she had no idea - she told me that I could look at the meals & workout what I can eat - USELESS!!

The argument about food continued at lunch, when I showed my piece of paper. She still insisted that if I look at the food I can see what’s in it & can eat it. The argument went on for a few minutes & I ended up walking off, either that or she was going to get punched. There were quite a few people from the tour that tried to help out & explain, but she just didn’t get it. Geoff was really good though, when he got his food, he got some nice fresh cherry tomatoes & plain rice that I could eat. After Steve & Geoff finished their lunch, we went to the “gift shop” that was just a food shop really & I tried to find some food, after several tries with my piece of paper & bringing up various things, I found an Anchovies & Almonds mix, which was actually quite nice - the smell was pretty awful, but it tasted pretty good, the Green Tea drink was awful though.

After the tour we went to the Korean War Museum, which was interesting, although after a big day of touring & with me feeling a little ill I spent more time sitting on any seat I came across. We got some nice pictures of some of the statues there in the garden. From the war museum we took the subway back to the area that we needed to go, we found out from a local (who spoke VERY good English) that Korea was playing Argentina, so the subway was VERY packed, I think I have a better understanding for the saying about being packed in like sardines. Literally if the door had opened on our side of the subway, we would have fallen out.

On the walk back we found a 7eleven & got some snacks, which turned out to be our dinner. I found some sushi & at 500Won each piece worked out to be only 0.50C each - cheap as. For dessert & my breakfast this morning we found some weird ass fruit that tasted like a cross between a cucumber & a melon, actually really yummy & very filling. The sushi was interesting I had one with Kin Chi in it, another with Octopus & Kim Chi, some Beef thing & something with beef and flavoured rice.

Today we are off to get some more food (7eleven sushi for me) & wander around a bit before we fly out to Mongolia this afternoon.

Here is something that I came across. A friend (Marty) shared it with one of his friends on facebook. A little shocking, but kinda funny in a dark humour sorta way …. enjoy Spider - Future Shots, Youtube clip.