On the train to Ulaanbaatar I was sharing a cabin with a girl named Irene from Holland who's going to teach English to children in Mongolia for a month before travelling on to Nepal, India and then South America. Also in our carriage were 16 German pensioners on a group tour. I was trying to sleep after having been up most of the night watching the football, meanwhile the Germans were all singing and one of them was playing an accordion... I couldn't be mad at them though - they were just SO excited to be there and so friendly that it was actually quite sweet.

We stopped at Naushky station for 5-6 hours - it is the last station on the Russian side of the border so is where the Russian visa and customs officials carry out their checks. We were able to get off the train and walk around but it was pouring with rain most of the time and the only thing of interest in Naushky is a small supermarket.

Irene introduced me to an Irish couple in our carriage that she'd met the previous day - Killian from Wexford and Aoife from Dublin who had also crossed Russia from St Petersburg and were going on to Mongolia, China and Vietnam. We were laughing at us 25-year olds being the quiet bunch among the 'rowdy' pensioners. We wanted to use up our remaining Roubles so we pooled our resources and went to the supermarket to buy some goodies that we could celebrate with after we'd passed the borders - we got a bottle of vodka ("when in Russia...") and couldn't resist a bottle of wine that had a picture of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean on the label.

At Naushky we were joined in our cabin by two Mongolians - a 23-year old guy named Sukhchuulin who worked as a mechanic in Irkutsk and was going back to see his mother in Ulaanbaatar, plus an older lady who was going to Sukhbaatar (the first stop on the Mongolian side of the border, where the Mongolian visa and customs clearance takes place). Irene and I were trying to learn some Mongolian words and phrases from a phrasebook and we were communicating with Sukhchuulin using a little book with pictures we could point at. He and the older lady were trying to explain to us the difference between "tiimi" which means "yes" and "timi" which means "camel", anyone that's a fan of South Park should be able to imagine the fits of laughter that Irene and I were in, sitting opposite this old Mongolian lady and young Mongolian guy repeatedly shouting at us "Timmy! Timmy! Timmy!".

When we were eating noodles for our dinner Sukhchuulin managed to convey to us that he thought these were bad for our stomach because they were worms that would munch on our insides... He also amused himself by pointing at us and gesturing "big eyes, big nose" in distinction to his Asian features, which made us laugh even more. He was telling us how he is saving to go to London in two years' time, which descended into a very tedious conversation in which he explained the difference between Russia and Mongolia in terms of how much mechanics earn, taxes paid, food and rent costs and he wanted us to explain the same about our jobs/countries.

It turned out that Sukhchuulin was friends with a Mongolian guy in Killian and Aoife's cabin so they swapped beds and Killian and Aoife joined Irene and I. We cracked open a bottle of wine that I had and some olives and nuts that Killian and Aoife had. Then we tried the 'Johnny Depp wine', which on closer inspection was neither Johnny Depp (it was a look-a-like), nor was it wine - it was a fairly nasty port so we mixed it with hot water and oranges to make it more bearable and alternated with shots of vodka. We had a great laugh and drowned out the Germans who were very solemn after they'd had a visa nightmare at the Mongolian border.

Ulaanbaatar itself is a strange place - some parts of it seem typically Asian but most of the city is very Westernised. The first thing I noticed after coming from Russia is that, although they also use the Cyrillic alphabet, most things are in English as well. Sukh Baatar Square in the centre is lovely. I got a great view of the city from the Zaisan war memorial up on a nearby hill. There are lots of factories billowing smoke in the outskirts and a fair bit of construction going on in the city centre. The city is clearly geared towards tourists with lots of restaurants, pubs and souvenir shops but there isn't a great deal to see (though I spent very little time in the city so maybe there's more that I didn't discover). Bizarrely there is a large Irish pub - The Grand Khaan - which had live music and great food - it was packed!