After a night on the train we arrived in Holhot where we had to spend the day. Pretty boring place to stop but we found some shopping centres to look around and got some groceries. We also came across what seemed like a locals-only market (kept getting evil stares) but was quite interesting. We caught our train Friday night and early Saturday morning arrived at the China-Mongolian border. We were stuck here for ten hours but we were able to see them change the train bogies (the wheels on the trains because the train tracks are different widths). We are two of ten in our group - there are four aussies and four brittish girls. We all get on well and all want to spend as little as possible! It was one of the brit girls birthdays so we played a bunch of fun drinking games. One of the train attendants was really funny and it wasn't long before Sam, Gavin (one of the aussies and the only other guy in our group) and a couple of others joined a bunch of train attendants and Mongolians for more drinking. The night ended at 2am after drinking beer, brandy, vodka and whisky!

We arrived in Ulanbatar at 10am on Sunday with Sam being a bit hung over from the night before! The scenery in Mongolia is beautiful and reminds us somewhat of NZ. The city is pretty random with flash new buildings and lots of old buildings, some in a poor state. The roads are also in a pretty bad state and there seems to be quite a bit of crime. Sam nearly had his jacket taken from under his arm but luckily he had it tight so they wern't able to yank it out. We checked out the museum and saw a cultural show.

Monday morning we grabbed some groceries and headed to the Ger camp. On the way Sam got to hold an eagle (which then decided to take flight and crashed in to poor Brenda's head as it was tied to a rope, luckily she was ok but it was a little sore for a while). We both rode camels as well which was fun and saw some yaks and reindeer. The landscape is amazing with beautiful mountains and greenish pasture. We visited a large rock that looked like a turtle and climbed part-way. We also went for a walk and visited a temple. Brenda was feeling quite sick - first bout of tummy upset.

In the morning Brenda was fine but now it was Sams turn! We visited some traditional families in their gers and tried fermented mares milk hanging in a cow skin bag! We also tried some cookies which tasted like salty dog biscuits! Sam felt too crook but Brenda also did archery and went on a sunset horse ride.

Today we packed up and headed back to Ulanbatar :( we would have rather stayed at the camp! The rest of the day is free time so we checked email and boring things like that. Tomorrow we visit a bunch of places including the black market and a monastery. On Friday we catch the train and it will be a long 4-5 day journey to Moscow! Hope you are all well and we will update when we next get the chance!