This morning whilst perusing the interweb, quite before Gavin had even dreamt of waking up, so about 10:30 or 11ish, Kathryn found a job vacancy in London that was particularly good. It must be applied for. Once again we found 'real-life' obligations getting in the way of holiday frolics. But this was important so most of the morning and afternoon was given over to refreshing Kathryn's CV, writing a cover letter and trying to submit the application. This proved to be the sticking point. Despite the promises of 'High-speed Broadband in your Room' it was anything but. Memories of dial-up internet came slowly, line-by-line, to mind. In the end it took hours to work. However trying to excuse a poor application with the excuse that the website didn't work when your job is to make websites work is a difficult excuse to make. Being the ideal candidate though, Kathryn got it done.

Being confined to the room resulted in the indulgence of room service. An indulgence matched only by the cheese to dough ratio on the pizza we ordered. It was like a few toppings lost in a glacier of cheese with a perfunctory wafer of dough below. Awesome. Dairy awesome. This break in work coincided with a sports broadcast we've not seen anywhere else. A sport which until today we would not have even knew was a sport with TV rights, team jackets, sponsors and a league. A sport to which any & every Australian kid could aspire. We speak of that great, exhilarating pub-based contest that is fuβball. Not fuβball with all the running around but fuβball - table top soccer. With the twisty sticks and the little plastic men. On TV. Like it's ESPN. Amazing. Love that in a place where a litre of beer costs less than $2, fuβball is on the telly. What a place.

This frivolity was followed by a pub crawl. We tried to decide between the crawl and a late evening dash through some of the cultural sites of the city. Pub crawl won before the sites were mentioned. In a town already well endowed with surprises yet another was the presence of multiple microbrewery pubs. The first on our visit was the MB Beer Plus brewery run by some German fellows. And it showed. The locally brewed beer was good, especially the larger. The pub was filled with Australian business types murmuring words like 'Rio Tinto', 'Presentation' and 'Bundaberg'. So obviously we left.


Next was a cultural pilgrimage, an Irish bar. Adding to Tokyo, Luxor, Phuket & Beijing the Irish have colonised Ulaan Baatar. Out of keeping, though, was the lack of Guinness - it was not clear whether through shortage or short-sightedness. We made do with an 'Irish Flag' shot instead. On the TV was the obvious sporting choice for an Irish Bar in Mongolia - AFL. We may never have left Sydney. And who else should appear here but the 'writer' from the train. In for another drink, this time without his publisher. He was ordering more vodkas as we left.

Next up was the Khanbrau Brauhaus. Another microbrewery. Unlike the previous Germanophile microbrewery, the beers here were not good. It was, however, filled with local Mongolians. The evening was completed by a performance from a local cover band with vociferous sing-a-long by Mongolian revelers.


Subsequent attempts to find Daves's Bar & the Chinngis Club were unsuccessful showing the datedness of our brand new guide book. Even the MB Plus was no longer admitting. So it was back to the hotel bar where, of all things, the Australian NRL was on all the TVs. Weird place UB. We were served by identical waitresses all dressed in green apron/dresses decorated in, as they say in the movie 'Office Space' "pieces of flair" - little badges of any sort. In-between serving they would congregate in one corner smoking cigarettes and drinking beers of their own whilst waiting for the drunken Mongolian men to paw shamelessly at them. Interestingly they took it in stride and were quick offer a meaningful slap of the hand in reply. We retired to bed politely declining the offers of "Hewro, party time?" offered by the questionable dressed, questionable female persons at the bar door.