I was walking down a long and lonesome road...

Dear Ciara my bosom dwelling friend,

Its criminal that its been so long without any real updates- I am dying to know about the rest of you gap yah...I was so jealous of the Oz buses and the chance to literally just bum around up the East coast. You owe me a major catch up when I reach Londinium.

So I've briefly abandoned the television and editorial career for a bit of bumming around myself. It was incredible and I'm so glad I did it but it did mean there were a lot of things I couldn't mention- some of the people I interviewed probably wouldn't appreciate being blogged about by a gap yah faring hobo who they thought was a qualified journalist. I kept getting asked where I had trained and which company had paid for my work visa out here. Oh, and then I got offered a job as a PR manager for a mining company. I hesitated to mention that my CV was a little lacking in things they would usually require for that position. Like, I dunno, a degree?

But I had underestimated how draining and manic UB is as a capital city if you never leave. I had been tehre a month and a half working non stop without ever making it to the countryside- which was the real reason I had come of course. To resurrect the spirit of Genghis Khan and raise a warrior tribe of Mongol nomads. Duh.

When a friend of mine got a little sexual harassment at work she decided to call it quits and head into the wilderness, so I followed suit and we jumped on a bus out of town. I literally cant emphasise how that was the extent of out planning. We didnt really know where we were going, we could barely pronounce the names of our destinations and we didnt actually know where the cool places to visit were. Every time we met someone they would ask us which tour company we were with. The conversation would go downhill from there. We had no tour company, no guide, no driver, no guidebook, no map and neither of us could speak more than utterly basic mongolian.

But when they realised that, cause we sure as hell weren't the average tourists, they tended to be so filled with compassion for these poor, retarded, ignorant Western girls who were almost definitely going to get raped and die along the way, everyone was wonderfully kind. After I lent my iPod to a 6 year old girl in a tutu and fairy wings and gave her a little chocolate, her mum rang her sister who happened to have some gers in her guesthouse we could sleep in. So we chilled out there in Kharkorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, for a night before hitching our way to the next town over.

The next town over turned out to be Bayangol, which wasnt so much a town as three gers beside the road. We got there by hitching with these two Mongolian guys, who spoke less English than we did their lingo, but were so amused by our absolute incompetence that one of them, Dagi, got out number so that we could contact him when we got to Tsenkher. Turned out when we got there we rang him up to hitch our way to the hot springs (which we thought were round the corner) and it was an hour off road up and down these valleys and through rivers and finally into a ger camp. problem was when we got there it turned out it was a VERY expensive ger camp for the likes of middle aged couples on spa retreats. We, on the other hand, hadnt washed in four days, had been hitching our way through the countryside and living off biscuits and chocolate and reused tea bags. Obviously the only conclusion was to haggle the price down less than 50% and stay there anyway. The manager thought we were pretty funny.


It was a god send as well because our entire bodies were battered from the beating they had taken horseriding the day before. At Bayangol, the three ger village, we were going to stay with Janchui, the brother of the woman we had stayed with the night before. So when we rocked up we just walked into the nearest ger and asked where he was. Its a funny thing about Mongolia, and one of the best things, is the wonderful hospitality from everyone. When you enter a ger you have to taste whatever it is they have just prepared, whether it be taragh, unurum or a full meal of tsuivan or a shot of vodka. It harks back to the days of crossing the steppes and knowing that they didnt have to take supplies with them, because someone would always look after them. Good ol' Jesus style hospitality.

When Janchui turned up though, he zoomed up on a motorbike. The only logical conclusion being that he would take Abi and I and our two massive rucksacks over the valleys for half an hour on this rickety motorbike of his. We spent the night there with his wife, child and twenty day old baby and the next morning we rode his horses five hours into the middle of nowhere to Khar Badras, the very very ancient city of Genghis. It was really just a dirt palisade and a flag on a mound but such an wide expanse of just nothingness around us and with only our three feisty horses in sight.

Once we got back to the road we set off again, hitching with a van already crammed full of a Mongolian family on their way to god knows where. It was at this stage we realised why maps had been made and how usually it was advisable to travel with one. It was on day 3 that we actually worked out where we were. They dropped us off in Hotont, a miserable town that was supposed to have a bus leaving for Tsetserleg that night, but this being Mongolia, it never came. Kindly, a biker chick we had met there who gabbled at us in indecipherable rural Mongolian gave us a bed to stay in until we managed to hitch a ride in the slowest pick up truck known to man the next day.

pro

Our greatest adventure was the journey from the hot springs to Tsetserleg, what passes for the centre of the province, because it was when we discovered that no cars were going there and there wasnt a road off of which we could hitch. So someone suggested walking. It was only 18k.

Of course it wasnt till later that we worked out it was more like 27k. And, even better, when we got back to UB a friend informed us that the distance was actually 35k. Our blisters were fantastic. Still, it didnt stop us from checking out Neptune, the only club in Tsetserleg. Someone should teach the Mongolians how to dance.

Anyway, peace out this has been an extraordinarily long message so I'll cop out for a while now.

See you in Reading gorgeous and we'll have a jelly fight xx

Street rat! Take that!

Dear Drum,

I didn't think it was in code though several sections might have been gibberish, but in compensation I thought I could shower a little more attention on you. Never fear- another post card shall find its swift way to your pigeonhole though!

Mongolia gets weirder by the day. Some things have become a lot more acceptablet- the staring, the mental traffic, the Cyrillic alphabet which I'm gradually getting a handle on or the bizarre food. But other stuff will keep me amazed for the next two weeks I think.

I'm still reeling over the whole TV anchor/talkshow thing. It's very hard to imagine when you're sat in the studio with only a camera guy and your script. It feels a lot more like one of Leady's practice videos that will never get seen again. That is until I sat down in the pub yesterday and there was a chorus of 'I watched you on TV yesterday!'.

Oops.

I have to question some sections of the TV station- I know that I've arrived with very western perceptions of things getting done when theyre supposed to, of having make up and wardrobe departments, drivers etc. But there doesnt seem to be any concept of that at all. Sometimes when they cant get the translator they just have me announce old English news- some stuff I'm announcing happened in April! HOw can this possibly be a news station??! But I'm still loving it- I'm even trying to get involved with the UB post (the english newspaper here) because theyre looking for editors and journalists. The last intern i my place had an article published- IN A NEWSPAPER AND ON TV AND INTERVIEWED IN ONE YEAR??! Thatd be incredible.

(Incidentally, on the cards for future TV moments are several interviews about music and entertainment- I find this hilarious. There is finally a time when my not knowing who Chad Michael Murray is will be an obstacle. I'm reviewing various Mongolian bands like Altan Urag, The Lemons, Khulan etc. who I've actually grown to quite like. Its a pity theyre not on iTunes... But also I'm expected to feature upcoming music. Like katy perry, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and Glee. There could not be anyone less able to do that. It gets worse though. Mongolia and specifically my TV station is trying to get Western celebrities to visit to increase publicity. Like Jey-Li and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But they need western interviewers. Enter yours truly. Oh, and the interviews are live. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY LIFE?)

Another volunteer and I are also running a journalism class at the local university. I cant think of anything more ironic and bizarre than me teaching journalism students about journalism- I dont even have a degree or any sort of qualifications in it yet somehow Im regarded as an expert. But dont worry, I've been keeping the classes suitably immature. In Thursday's How To guide I was sure to include Miss P's PEE and FART lessons. My Australian co-teacher was so unimpressed....

The wardrobe issues havent improved either. At least half my clothes have holes in them or are held together with safety pins. A couple of days ago my work skirt ripped all the way up to my waist. Even I then had to admit something had to be done.

STREET KIDS. I've travelled a shitload and this is something that even I still find mindboggling. They're everywhere. And sometimes we go Western on them and try to help in orphanages or give them money. Other times, I found myself with an attitude I hope I never bring back to the UK. Everyone gets warned that theft is rife and protect your belongings with everything you have- never let your guard down. But I get told that wherever I go and I have never had bad experiences. Generally, I've been shown best of human nature- shop assistants who have handed over envelopes containing shitloads of money that I've dropped, taxi guys whove rung people on my phone to bring it back to me etc...

Here, take your eyes or your hands off your possessions for more than a few seconds and expect to have them go walkabouts.

My wallet got stolen as I was jumping onto a bus and took my hand off it to catch the rail.

My camera got stolen when I was in a bar, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. Boom. Bizarrely though I found my SIM card on the floor. Politest thief in Mongolia?

Strangest yet was my tussle with a street kid. Walking along the street with my iPod in a street kid starts asking me for money. Rule No.1 is you never give them money (someone else will just take it off them and/or if they see where you keep your money...) But then he starts shaking my elbow. Up until now my hand has been on my iPod but I go to take my headphones out and suddenly the music stops. Putting my hand in my pocket, I grope around but all I have is an empty pocket. In a matter of seconds the boy has reached into my coat pocket, unplugged it and put it in his. I was honest to god gobsmacked- to the point I didnt want to accuse him of stealing because it just seemed too ludicrous. I grabbed him by the wrist before I even thought it through and demanded it back, at which point he started swearing- evidently the only English words he knew. Of course I'm now stood in the middle of the high street, a Western girl holding a local boy by the wrist as he struggles, swears and shouts in Mongolian. British embarrassment kicking in I desperately want to let go, but at the same time...IPOD??! Eventually two Mongolian strangers turn up- one of whom can speak English. I still have my headphones in at this point, tragically disconnected to any music so the case is leaning slightly more towards my side. But as soon as I have it back the Mongolian man raises his arm to hit the child- he doesnt, but there was an education in street life. Aladdin had never seemed less glamorous.

Anyway love, I'm sure you've got essays to do and things to procrastinate over so I shall leave you with all my love and the promise of more contact. And of course, a visit to cambridge next year.

xxxx

The Words Were Hard to Find

Dear Queasy,

Im not even sure you'll get this though I know you're back from HK I dont know facebook active you are yet. Anyhows, I thought of you a fair bit today so it made sense.
So I’ll save the bombshell for later.

Mongolia is mental. I’ve already mentioned the driving which just gets crazier with every day but watching even the locals make mad dashes across the road on a regular basis only to stop the cars with their hands on the bonnets doesn’t get old. A girl here said she saw two buses go headlong into each other and with the attitude these buses take it doesn’t surprise me- I can almost see them going straight for each other, challenges in their eyes. ‘Go on, if you think you’re khan enough’. (I’m sorry, when you don’t have a common language puns are a lost concept).

Do you remember when we used to read Jess’ manga almost voraciously? You know those young Japanese guys were always a certain type- a piercing or two, a bomber jacket and that Asian punk look? Mongolian youth are the same- ripped jeans tucked into those big, leather biker boots, baggy jackets and stubble combined with the slight air of just having been kicked out of a rock band.

I am having a few wardrobe crises (this relates to the bombshell- wait for it). Firstly I hadn’t brought any wash stuff for excess baggage reasons and when I got here, it sounds obvious I know, everything was in Cyrillic. There are only so many times you can put shower gel in your hair and not feel the consequences. Subsequently I now smell like a combination of papaya, avocado and yoghurt and my hands smell constantly like yoghurt. This was all completely irrelevant of course because I ended up at the Mongolian hairdresser’s today. (I’m building up the suspense but the upcoming bombshell will explain all.) The hairdresser had blatantly never had to deal with Western hair before and there were several moments when I had more in common with Aslan than the businesswoman she had been asked to present. Not to mention I was marginally worried that she might start liberally applying the ‘blackening shampoo’ that I had seen advertised on TV. Now that would really mess with my Aussie blondage (a neologism I particularly like because if you take out the ‘l’…) Anyway clothing –wise I’m having a few difficulties cobbling together out of random Asian clothes and my own skewed version both of propriety and fashion something that could be called businesslike. It’s a task not lightly undertaken. I thought of you again and how you’d come quicker to the realisation than I of how other people perceive our clothes. I fear it may be too late for me. I’m doomed to either frumpy or whore. Well I’ve managed to get a jumper/shirt that comes up to my collarbones, a skirt that covers my knees (even though my tights are covered in holes that I’ve failed to craftily hide under my heels or too high up my skirt.

So I come to my bombshell. I may or may not be presenting the news on national Mongolian TV every weeknight this May.

Yeah. That was my reaction. WTF. Or as I would say with Duffy (you have to meet him. You’ll fall in love. Everyone has) Why The Fuck Not. Largely I’ll sat straight up it has nothing to do with me- it’s a right place right time kind of gig. The last volunteer, Biljana, did this so it’s a matter of the best English speaker continuing her legacy. Since I’m English and almost no one else speaks it, it was a no brainer. But I’ve never been more thankful to both Pip and Lead. How else would I be so quick at editing things down to the slimmest version to create the headlines? (Or leads as they’re called in TV). And all I could think when I was sat in front of the camera was- cast your golden net with your eyes, pause, speak slowly, breathe, enunciate. I must have been the only person they’d seen to annotate the text. Still I think once we’ve played to a live audience of 500 several times over, there’s little that can rock my nerve. I’m trying to convince myself that the English speaking audience in UB is that minimal. Not to mention on Sundays I’m supposed to host a media/entertainment programme for twenty minutes- only this time I choose the theme, write the script and deliver it myself.

I somehow feel I’ve done a Bridget Jones and am somehow even less qualified and professional than she was.

Anyway my queasiest of Pease I’m missing you and our endless discourses infinitely and hoping you’re doing well adjusting to life back in the UK.

All my dramatic love,
Lizzy

Funkytown

Dear Vez my love,

Our mini chat yesterday kept recurring in my head- Mongolia is a funky country I said and I couldn’t have been proved more right. There are definitely things that still make me pause. The staring still gets to me. I think its worse than HK because even though we’re obviously western there, they’re used to ‘our sort’. Here, there’s still the sense I just waltzed off the Trans-Siberian Railway and got lost on my way to China. On one of my many walk I glanced across the street to find an entire busload of Mongolians watching me s if I’d just skipped off Saturn. The children make it worth it though. (Now we’ll have none of those jokes please…) It seems ok on the sheer principle of childlike wonder to get stared at- whether by the toddler jumping on bricks across manholes to find himself dwarfed by a strange white girl and his only response was a quiet, defeated ‘oh’, or the boy cycling so surprised that I smiled at him that he beamed back and circled me on his bike or even the small boy in a bright pink beanie who followed me for ten minutes babbling incomprehensible Mongolian. They’re just adorable. (Never fear, I shan’t be posting any of the obligatory ‘me with impoverished child’ that come out of gap years, Unless its under my arm and we’re running onto a plane). Zulaa’s two year old son has so much in common with the baby from Ice Age they might be descendants. He even ran after his mum clapping his hands for the [LAST WATERMELON] orange juice. I might have to come home with a Mongol baby. (I kid, I kid, you can put those condoms and morning after pills away).

Like you said, its strangely humbling to be surrounded by people as they speak a language of which you cannot understand a scrap. I know its only day 5 but I still haven’t got an inkling- though you always know when they’re talking about you. Whether its my name, Britain, or hand gestures its always fairly obvious and then terribly disconcerting when no one translates. Someone described the Mongolian language as sounding like two cats mating until they lose the plot and scratch each other to death. I see their point. But people said the same about German and, like you, I came to really like it. I have regressed when it comes to learning Mongolian. I spent last night in a café whilst a small girl watched in a amazement as I failed to identify various letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. When I got home I even rushed in gabbling various meaningless greetings in order to show my host mother how much I’d learnt. They’ve made a real effort with me- as neither of them speak English she asked her sister, who speaks French to come round and possibly her other sister who speaks a little English. Theres nothing more bizarre than trying to remember the conjugation of French verbs to an audience of onlooking Mongolian family members.

The complete lack of boundaries never fails to amaze but mostly delight me. Beyond the concept of Ariuna, my host sister, sharing a bed with me whilst I’m still almost a complete stranger, both she and her mother, Naryaa, will get changed in front of me or walk in whilst I’m sleeping.. Thanks god boarding school prepared me- but it goes beyond the boundaries of what we experienced. Similarly when I wanted to change into smarter clothes my colleagues at the office told me to just shut the door and go for it. I hadn’t even met half of them! But its also absolutely gorgeous.. On my last two trips home (I live about half an hours walk from work or 45 minutes from Sukhbataar Sq where my Mongolian lessons are) I haven’t walked home alone. The first time after several fearful looks from me that I had or would miss my bus stop and end up at the bus depot at midnight, a random Mongolian girl took pity and told me when to get off and then an equally random guy walked me all the way home in order to practice his English. The same happened today after a guy pulled me out of the path of an oncoming car.

Still the oddest things are the small ones
• they don’t serve or drink alcohol on the first of the month
• they don’t use knives (try eating cabbage with a spoon. Its not elegant)
• it took me days to realise Narya and Ider always picked my handbag off the floor, but apparently its because only beggars leave bags on the floor for money. Odd. But makes sense.
• They put salt in their tea. I haven’t actually experienced this one but I have been forewarned. That’s something I might not bring back with me.

I’ll add to my growing list of oddities I’m sure, but those ones are bizarre. But lovely. As ever.

Much love my darling and enjoy your last two weeks in Deutschland. I had the same homesickness leaving Oz. It’ll be hard to do that again I’m sure.
Bestival will be a riot though!
Lizzy

Lost in Translation

Dear Paedobear,

Well after our recent chat Im sure youd be proud of me. Its been two days and so far I havent slept alone in my stay in UB. It seems I've continued my incredible celibate bed hopping skills from Oz. I should be an international sensation.

I didnt land till midnight and when we finally pulled into the only person at the house was a teenage Mongolian girl who had prepared everything for my arrival. I was supposed to be staying wth her mother but because of my unexpected plane change she was on business in Korea. This was all fine until the guide who dropped me off left and we became alarmingly aware that neither of us speak each others language. Thank god for my charades practice (finely honed at Jess' house at Christmas- ask her about Dr Yarmulke and Man Thumb).

Even so, once we'd covered the basics; point at self and say Elizabeth, mime sleeping and look questioning, she rubs her stomach [No guys, she wasnt asking if I was pregnant but thanks for the faith] and I shake my head etc, it gets remarkably difficult to hold a conversation. Her name is  Ariuka, she's 16 and still at school, helping her mum out at her clothing store at the weekends. I found this out in a manner of charades and with the help of a English-Mongolian phrasebook which had been printed in what must have been the 1960s- it considered where to buy men's cologne in a department store a fairly crucial piece of information evidently. I turned out that her elder brother Azaa was studying software in Bangalore but had spent several years learning English so she got hold of him on MSN and we spent a surreal hour trying to establish simple things like when we would wake up in the morning and whether I'd want breakfast and dinner. This was broken up intermittently by by exclamations of how beautiful I was followed shortly by a description of her beautiful brother. This is somewhat distressing. Updates shall follow.

By about 2am her brother called the shots and told us both to go to bed. Nice to see the control he had from across the continent. I pointed at myself and the bed and her and the bed and mimed out where we were going to sleep. I think somethings must have got lost in translation because, preparing as I was to sleep, she jumped in the bed next to me. Needless to say, it had been a while since a strange girl had hopped in my bed so I was somewhat thrown. But hey, go figure, its what they call immersion right? Nothing more integrating than a little cuddle. (I have now been informed that no, this is not the norm and I do actually get a room. The handbook had warned that Mongolians were very shy, conservative and withdrawn though friendly. I think it may need updating)

Their house is lovely- its absurdly clean and neat so much t\so that I find myself folding and ordering my clothes and making my bed in the mornings. I cant promise this will continue back home, so Duffyneed not fear hell be out of a job. Especially after the squalor we lived in in the Fish house with questionable hygiene, dodgy food-poisoning inducing meals, Roland the rat, Colin and his cockraoach family and the trail of ants who had made our kitchen counter their personal M1 and endless bottles, boxes, cans, glasses, mugs and tupperwares of ethanol-esque alcohol, it feels like I've returned to civilsation. Ironic, eh?

Not just civilsation but home- several of the other volunteers (older than me by a stretch of a few years) have never lived away from home (its more common in Oz where they dont live on campus at uni) so i dont think they appreciate how nice it is but my host family (Ariuka's mum Narya came home yesterday) are excessively kind about food. Eggs and thick, hard bread and long Frankfurter like sausages (oh grow up!) for breakfast, a stew called hosh or hoff of cabages, potatoes, mutton and rice and cake like cookies to have with tea- if I was a yeti when I left Sydney Ill be a veritable BFG when I get home.

Yesterday my guide, Zuula, showed me around UB which largely consisted in a walk from the house to the Projects Abroad office down the very long Peace Av. (apparently th equivalent of Oxford St not that youd have thought it) to see the State Department Store (set up in 1921 as the first Department Store in Mongolia but somewhat hindered by the Communist era), Sukhbaatar Square with its government building (UB's Whitehouse. I'm sure Barack would say the same) and toweing statue of Genghis Khan. We changed my money along the way into one of the most ridiculous currencies I've ever seen- 1 pound is roughly 2,200 tigruk so I walked out with a wad of cash big enough to use as a pillow.

Having come straight from Hong Kong one of the first things I noticed was the lack of people on the streets. I had briefly considered running before dusk in HK (I know, you can tell Ems and Jack and they can laugh) until the logistics hit home and I realised I'd spent most of my time jogging on one spot the streets are so congested. Everything in HK is pint sized- the tiny people have tiny clothes (the size Christine could fit in after her NYE corset...) and tiny shops so small they dont have fitting rooms. I feldt like I'd done a Gulliver and landed in Lilliput. Here though the streets are empty, even by London standards, are pockmarked with manholes, piles of bricks and rubble and half built walls and scaffolding. The driving is mental- I had thought Paris was bad but here, as one of the other volunteers said, they dont slow down they even do a 'cheeky' speed up. I dont know whether theyr playing Hit The Westerner, but they seem to be doing a very good job of it. I may have to rethink my traffic strategy- its too much paperwork for them to hit me- which I employed back home much to Eliot's fear.

I managed to disappear last night by meeting up with the other volunteers for drinks (an Irish pub if you remember the last one we went to back in those heady days in Paris) which turned into several drinks as we moved onto Xanadu Art Gallery. There were few things more surreal than standing in an art gallery drinking Chinggis (the local beer) as a room full of ex-pats sang along to Mr Brightside played on the acoustic guitar by a somewhat destroyed Australian. A little later, when it was my round, the Australian volunteer next to me expressed (for the umpteenth time) his burning desire for vodka shots. Which led of course to the purchase of a bottle of Borol and 5 glasses. The whole bottle was gone within minutes and it didnt take much to for the devils on my shoulder to conclude that clubbing was the next step forward. I think it was at this point that the girl opposite asked how long I'd been in Mongolia: under 24 hours.

In an attempt not to wake up my very kind host family at 3:30am, it was generally decided that staying at a friends house was preferable which is where I woke up this morning for a crisp winter walk back to the house aong Peace Av. When Narya saw me, far from being annoyed, she cooked me breakfast (eggs and sausages and bread again. The pregnancy comment might not be far off), sent me to shower and bed and cooked me lunch to heat up when I woke up. I just found myself a Mongolian mum.

Anyway babes, I should start getting ready- Im meeting the other volunteers for dinner in a couple of hours. Bed lottery anyone?

Miss you like  a bird misses humming 
Much love your mistress, conscience and spiritual guide xxx

...the tough shop, get massages, eat dumplings and go clubbing

Cher Adrien,

Oh Im so glad youve been enjoying my various travels, misdemeanours and pickles. The latest set, naturally, crown the scarecrow king but I like to feel I've been working up to them in the last 18 years.

I left Oz with very little trouble, not even a hangover because it happened to be Good Friday the night before I left and everything from bottle shops, bars and clubs closed at ten. I even managed to go the whole journey unscathed as one of the boys on the sailing trip was catching a flight 15 minutes before me from the same terminal. So he carried my bags, filled in my immigration form, took me to excess baggage and retrieved my laptop when I almost left it at security. I think I've managed to prove the exception to the rule that Gap years mature, develop and hone a person's perception of the world. I may even have gotten worse.

This of course would be proven by my entire stay in HK- my entire family met me at the HK airport (though the boys looked slightly shifty at this unnaturally familial event) and I wasnt really let loose for a while. Probably a good thing because every time I was I managed to lose something- there went two pairs of sunglasses and my Octopus card (like an Oyster card but can also be used to buy things in shops. which is frankly incedible and I think is catching on in England. I kept using it to buy lemon tea and mango juice which I was getting strangely addicted to after my withdrawal symptons from Bundaberg Ginger Beer in Oz.) The best family moment that we may ever have had was in a restaurant one night where we decided that it wasnt enough to order a few dishes but 19 would be enough between the five of us. The look on the waiters' faces when we just kept adding more was priceless, but it hurt too much to laugh. We all felt physically ill afterwards. My mother was horrified.

The Visa complications (which to my credit I discovered rather than anyone else although feel free to point out that I discovered this three days before my flight on Easter Sunday when no courier services were working rather a couple of months before) that I could enter Mongolia as an American citizen but not as a British citizen (unless I had jumped through several hoops and/or reentered Mongolia after a weekend trip to Beijing at some point) led to the fantastic sequence of events bringing my Yankee passport here. The Mongolian embassy in HK, unknown to Mongolia, had shut down. Awkward you might say. We had brought a map in case the taxi driver couldnt find the embassy though ironically his taxi skills would have been impressive if he had found it. We might, however, have ended up in China. Thus Duffy (angel that he is) brought it from the house to Heathrow and stood next to terminal five so that a guy could pick it up. He left it with the concierge in a hotel in Istanbul where the next morning another guy took it to Hong Kong, via Frankfurt. I then picked it up (and as Emily pointed out wearing the kind of clothes that are acceptable on a beach in Oz [no, not a nudist beach you filthy minded boy!] but hardly in an office in HK. Still, another banker found it so hilarious he asked us to dinner to regale his family with 'the drop'. And thus for a space of about 9 hours I had two passports.

On Thursday I got to make another trip to an embassy- checking my cindered passport through security in a tupperware raised some glances but not as much as the woman behind the counter when I explained how it had happened. Then I think she realised no one would make up that story. No one is THAT stupid. Still there was nothing they could do so it became a matter of turning up as early as possible in the airport and going through teh same rigmarole at Immigrations. Again the bemused looks and scarcely repressed giggles as the cover fell off in a pile of ash on the counter adn when they tried to stamp it it crinkled and fell apart. The tupperware is getting fuller by the trip.

Things were also impeded as we tried to explain that although my dad is a HK resident and I had entered on an English passport and left on an American one I was not travelling to London but UB and then Beijing. Oh and my dad was flying to China. Immigration's worst nightmare? Trust me, therell be somehing spectacular on the way back to england!

Anyhow, thats my drastic fantastic story of woe and idiocy . Otherwise HK was great- I had to spend most of my time shopping for clothes as I discovered that I was expected to look 'professional' for certain events in UB. This required clothing that covered shoulders, knees and midriff. Needless to say, my wardrobe contains very little in that brief. I was also simultaneously packing for a Mongolian winter/spring/summer and gear which would be suitable for sheep shearing, ger repairing, manure farming and horse riding. A recent yet crucial realisation is how little clothing can be worn in a boardroom and on a camel. Logisitcs ensued.

I shall update asap on Mongolia though I can tell you the people are lovely, the weather is most certainly here (Its getting to that crux where I decided cold outweighs embarrassment and I put on the hat with ears. Im close. Ever so close.) and Im ultra excited about all the mayhem which will doubtless ensue.

Over and out xx

Dearest Duffy love,

Sorry I've been so shocking on the contact front but please believe when I say a postcard is winging its way towards you as we speak. Well. Almost. But I dont think Ill get much internet next month and none at all in June so Skypage is out and facebook will gradually disappear I believe. Sorry dearest, I shall have to try and savour and ration some phone calls..

I will try and excuse myself with the fact that I have been offshore for four of the last five weeks and during that one week onshore the yachtmaster theory was so unnecessarily knackering that I barely had the energy to go clubbing never mind skyping etc.

The sailing has been such a blast-  there have been two weeks of offshore training, doing things like boat handling etc and then it all came together in the last two weeks of our mile builder. Of all the sailing that was the most epic- twelve days on a 55 foot yacht with an all female crew and our much enduring skipper.

We were very undermanned (quite literally) which meant that although we had loads of excess space to stretch out in, we had to make do in a boat that usually took around 10 people to crew with half of that. On the upside it was great practice for doing singlehanded reefing and de-reefing or sail hoists and drops and tacks etc, but it meant we had really conservative sail plans and and wouldnt go quire as fast as I would have liked. Speed demon that I am... Especially since we had basically no wind for those two weeks we ended up motoring up and down the east coast- by the end of it we had stopped going into ports and were just traversing around imaginary waypoints which was, quite frankly, soul destroying. After motoring around for 120 hours in what was essentially a glorified water taxi, we had all had enough and threw the towel in as soon as we had covered the necessary miles. Other than that though, the whole trip was spectacular.

Because they were so few of us we worked on watches of two with two hours off/two hours on. Knackering as it was, when there were very few nights of decent sleep, we turned into a floating WI and really looked after each other. Do you remember the skintight shiny black thermals you helped me pack? Im became horribly attached to them to the point of living in them and within days it had got nicknamed my ninja suit. After that we went in a downhill spiral of silliness- Team Ninja all had ninja suits and we came up with a ridiculous ninja laws; referring to each other by ninja names (Captain Ninja, Optimistic, Casual, Scottish and yours truly, Proto), to dolphins as sea monsters, storms as sea dragons etc. Our second law was to never wake someone up off watch without offering them food or drink or sustenance of some kind- it became routine to hear 'Proto, Proto, ten minutes till watches. Would you like tea or coffee? Your cake is on the fridge'. When we told the boys they totally took the piss, but our skipper was mighty glad he'd got our boat. Not to mention there was superb cooking all round- the mark of a good meal was whether it 'sent someone into the bilges' which meant that they were so full they werent capable of standing up and would have to lie down even though this meant they would have their heads on the hygienically questionable and indubitably manky bilges under the floorboards. Of course half of the problem with food was that we ate out of dog bowls (Im not kidding. We decided we had been reduced to the level of animals- sleep, wake up and sail/play, eat until we got sick out of dog bowls and occasionally get fed treats) and then quantities were very difficult to judge. By the seventh day when I was trying to cook Bolognaise in a kitchen where the hobs swung around, the boiling pans were tipping almost vertically and everything moved all the time, including yourself we concluded that no one could call themselves a real chef until they had cooked in a kitchen that moved and tried to make food in dog bowls look appealing. Eat your hearts out Jamie and Gordon!

To get practice as skipper we each had to lead and skipper a passage and whilst most people had fairly uneventful days I managed to take charge on a couple of days where literally everything that could have gone wrong attempted to- the boom broke as we were sailing and about to tack, lobster pots got caught around the keel at 3am and a little while the engine failed whilst we were in so little wind sailing would have been impossible. The most exciting was at 4am one morning my watchmate was on the helm whilst I attempted to bake a cake for the next watch and when I came up on deck she announced we were being chased. The obvious conclusion to this was we were blatantly being chased by pirates so we knocked the engine on and tried to outrun them. Shortly after we realised we were being chased by the Harbourmaster- water police- and sheepishly slowed down to get 'pulled over'. They hadnt appreciated being called pirates at all.

Thus by the end of about 12 days what little sanity and maturity I had arrived with disappeared. The practical jokes had escalated from dropping cookies into the skipper's cabin through a hatch and arranging fruit in amusing shapes on his bunk to hoisting wellies and shorts up the mast by the halyard. Embarrassingly for us when we hoisted his shorts up the backstay like a set of highly unoriginal American teenagers, we hadnt considered how to get down again. Eventually he (with minimal amusement) strapped me into a harness chair and had the others winch me up as I clambered over the boom to grab his shorts with a boathook. Awkwardly as I was halfway up a boat full of teenage girls drifted past to the sight of me halfway up a boat reaching for some shorts as an unamused and immature set of adults below gazed on. It wasnt our finest hour.

Im sorry my dearest to confuse and bore you with all these nautical things. Its been bizarrely my life for the last three months and so jokes like when hoisting the mainsail
'You keep going till you get it up'
'I can't! I've tried and I cant get it up any higher'
'Alright I'll grind if its stiffer than usual'
...somehow arent quite as usual.

miss you like gingers miss ninjas
your mistress xxxxx