Mongolia - Thursday 10 May

We left the Ger camp at 6.00am this morning to start the long journey back to Ulaanbaatar. We made sure we didn't get the back seat this time. We arrived back to the city around 12.30 and checked back into the hotel. Everyone jumped straight into their showers after not seeing one in 3 days. It was great to have the use of a 'real' toilet again as well. The drop style hole in the ground ones we'd used in the desert were revolting and got worse as the days went on. So most of us ended up having a cold shower because the hot had run out, but it was a great feeling to be clean all the same. The weather in Mongolia has been pretty cold although indoors is always heated.

Later in the afternoon we went off to have a $12 one hour long massage (cheaper than the $17 I thought it was going to be). I had a tiny little Mongolian woman as my massuese, and I almost asked our tour guide to ask her to give me a hard massage as she looked as though she didn't have the strength to do so. How wrong could I have been!! She almost killed me! For an hour she pinched, punched and pumelled my body, jumped on my back with her whole body, jabbed her knees into my butt and almost made me throw up as she attempted to rip my arms off. I was so sore by the end of it, and so grateful I hadn't asked for a hard massage. But it was a good massage all the same.

We had caught a taxi to the massage parlour, and our tour guide hailed one down to take us home. There are real taxi's in Mongolia, although every car is potentially a taxi (so you are basically hitch hiking). We jumped into the car and were almost back to the hotel when another car rear ended us. It was a pretty harsh collision but we were all ok, and just jumped out, paid the driver 80c (that was including a .30c tip) and walked the rest of the way to the hotel.

Dinner was at a western restaurant called Mongolian Bar B Q and Grill, which was an all you can eat for about $8. You chose your own meat and veges etc then took it all to the cooks that chucked your food on a huge cylindrical hot plate where they cooked it for you. They were show offs and threw all the food in the air, making it land on the plate. Yum Yum!!