...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