The train from Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar looked  the same as the others. But they were worlds apart, there was no smoking or drinking, the carriage was locked so you couldnt even walk up and down the train and the toilet was constantly closed. We seemed to stop at every shed and dog kennel along the way which meant you were constantly woken when the train broke and you had to grab something before you fell out of bed. We shared our carriage with a guy called Roland from Neverland - i think he was another bulls***ter cos he hadnt even heard of Peterpan or Tinkerbell, and he had definitely grown up, he had a massive Brazilian - girlfriend that is not the over kind, we didnt get that close. We never got her name as he always referred to her as his Brazilian gilfriend, as in hi my names Roland and this is my Brazilian girlfriend. They had got to the cabin before us and already spread there luggage everywhere, they said that they were on a 3 week holiday but it looked like they were moving house. Roland asked if we wanted the two top bunks or the two bottom but it was obviouse they wanted the two bottom as they had already covered it with there stuff, I told him we had booked 1 top and 1 bottom and that's what we wanted. I didn't fancy getting a face full of Brazilian every time I wanted to get down or up. Mostly we just slept and read. When we got to the Russian border things were a bit hairy, and I'm not just talking about the Russian women guards. They had all kinds of people come on to the train, there were immigration, customs, army people and sniffer dogs. And we all had to stand outside our cabins while they searched them, I thought it would lighten the mood if I hid under the bottom seat and shouted BOO! when they came in but a little voice told me it was a bad idea. ( I don't actually have a little voice in my head that's Steve). They took our passports then after a few hours they returned them and we set off, 10minutes later we got to the Mongolian side and started the whole routine again. When they took Steves passport they just kept looking at it and looking at him. Really studying his face. I was trying so hard not to laugh cos these people were taking it really seriously and I knew I shouldn't but that just made me want to laugh even more, finally about 8 hours later it was over and we high fives as we left Russia our first real border crossing.