Mongolia: 2 Viruses and a punch in the face

The train journey to Ulan Bator/Ulaanbaatar was pretty hellish thanks to the train pretty much being a mobile market with Mongolian and Chinese traders dragging stock backwards and forwards all night. On the first morning we went out to find a massive computer market called Computerland so that Pete could replace the lost mp3 player. We managed to find an apparent bargain for only £10 but it came bundled with a lovely virus that infected the laptop and everything that touched it. It was eventually healed but I suspect it had already infected Pete as he had to spend nearly all of the next day in bed. There is a chance that it wasn't the computer that infected him but the vast quantities of very cheap "meat" dishes we had been eating... Either way he made it out of bed to watch Spurs at quarter to 5 in the morning!

The next day we took a trip to the Terelj national park where we would be spending the night in a Ger, a traditional Mongolian Nomad tent that was surprisingly comfortable and (whilst the fire was going) exceptionally warm! Unfortunately the fire went out at night time when the temperatures dipped below -15°C; waking up in boxers in that weather is not nice when you went to sleep in what felt like a sauna! On our second day there we went on a horse ride for a couple of hours, unfortunately a bit of an anticlimax after waiting all day for the horses to return from the vast surrounding nothingness!

On our return to the capital we decided to have a night out at a Mongolian club (they do exist!). A group of about 10 of us from the hostel went and half of us ended up exceptionally drunk thanks to cheap drinks prices. Pete had set off home a few hours before me, still recovering from the food poisoning, so me and a girl from the hostel and John, a Spurs fan we had been travelling with since Ulan Ude got a taxi back at the end of the night. This seemed fine until we got back and the driver started demanding more from us. We all went to get out but there was no handle on my door so by the time I had climbed across the driver was blocking the door leaving me trapped. In the end I barged past him but he grabbed my coat at the chest and would not let go, repeatedly shouting “5000, 5000!” in my face. Me and John tried to fight him off me for a while as we had no money to give him but he was a big guy and we were out muscled. Eventually an American guy we had been out with earlier in the night heard the fuss and came over to pay him, the driver finally let go but then took a swing at me, glancing my cheek. All of this took place in a children’s play area in the snow, certainly one of the more surreal experiences of my life! 

One more thing from Mongolia; we finally caught a train on time thanks to a lift from the hostel!