Morning all,

Well, we're just about to leave China for Vietnam - the final country before we land in Oz. Since the last update we've been in Mongolia and Beijing.

Mongolia was incredible. We spent the first night in "UB" aka Ulaan Baator, the capital. It's a crazy place - half the people live in houses, the other half still live in their gers (see photo). Traffic is an absolute nightmare and the police like to supplement their wages by shaking down tourists for bribes! Happily, we avoided all that and just enjoyed the otherwise laid back atmosphere.

We spent three nights out in the countryside, staying with local chaps in their ger camps. We were lucky enough to stay at one place where they were having a big celebration as it was horse branding day. Not sure the horses enjoyed it all that much but once they were done we were invited to a big feast in the main man's ger - huge amounts of food and even huger amounts of vodka. Turns out the guy's brother works at the bottling plant so there was never going to be a shortage.

After that we spent a couple of nights 300km west of UB with just ourselves and Jack - our extraordinarily good driver. Mongolian roads are for the most part just random tracks through the desert so 9 hours on these, 3 of them in the dark, and still getting to our destination was a pretty good effort we reckoned!

All the people we met were fantastic too - it was a great time.

About to run out of internet time so will speak about Beijing next time. Suffice to say it's a very slick looking place filled with completedly mad people! Went to the Night Market last night and ate snake and eel amonst other things. Yum!!

Speak to you all soon,

N & Lx