Goodbye Mongolia...

Today is Friday and this morning we will ride the 100 km to the boarder and back into Russia.  The mountain in this section of Russia are supposed to be spectacular so I am very much looking forward to finding a nice camp tonight.  We are all also a little sick of the Mongolian food so it will be nice to get back into Russia for a few days.

Last night we walked into Olgii to find a cold beer.  We hadn't had a cold beer since UB - there is just no refrigeration through most of Mongolia.  We stopped at two places and struck out - warm beer on the back shelf only.  The third place we hit was the Duman hotel where Malcolm and Sara had stayed an they mentioned there was a pub and nightclub.  We walked into the pub and saw all the warm beers lined op on the back bar - shit, strike three.  While Mark and I waited for the bartender Ken peeked into the nightclub and jackpot - they had a cooler with cold beer.  So we bought cold beers and took them into the pub as the nightclub was super cheesy and we already had a couple of locals ask us to buy them beers.  We had heard this part of Mongolia was the Khazak region of the country and you had to watch for scammers, aggressive drunks and people constantly asking you to give them your stuff.  We had already been flagged down earlier that day with people asking for food, booze, etc.

We finished our first beer and I walked next door to get us another round.  There were several drunk locals up at the bar when I put the three beers up to pay.  One of the drunks grabbed on of my beers and said mine.  I told him no, that they were mine and took it back.  He grabbed it again so I again took it back.  He then proceeded to full on punch me in the chest.  It surprised me more than it hurt as I was still making the transaction with the bartender.  But this SOB just sucker punches me because I won't give him a beer - so re-actively I make a move to defend myself and say loudly the next person to touch me is going to get hurt.  Luckily his friend pulls him back and the security guard came over and restrained him.  I took the beers back to the pub and while telling the story to Ken and Mark the SOB's friend comes over, sits down at the table and starts asking us to buy him beers.  At this point we are all getting sick of the harassment.  The security guard comes over and pulls him out of our booth and two minutes later he is back - with a ripped up shirt.  Apparently the guard roughed him up a bit.  Again the guard grabs him out of or booth and pulls him out of the pub.  We slipped the security guy 30,000 Tugrig (about $13) and he made sure no one bothered us again.  

This morning we had the included breakfast at the Ger camp - eggs, potatoes, cabbage and bread.  We had been eating camp oatmeal for the past 5 days so the full breakfast was nice.  We sat and chatted with a couple from Israel that had been trekking in the national park to the north and shared stories on our respective Mongolia experiences.  

Some random photos of the past 10 days in Mongolia...