Ulaanbaatar

Monday 16 July

Our wake-up call never happened so we got ready in a rush and drove out to the brand new MCS Tiger Brewery on the eastern outskirts of town. Mongolia has only 2 million people and half of them live in UB - it seems a good proportion of these were scattered in 'gers' (the movable circular tents) in the city and the nothern hills. Lester welcomed us and took the time to show us around even though he was in the middle of a crisis - having launched the brewery with great success less than a month ago, a few officials decided they wanted a piece of the action and revoked our brewing license until the right palms were greased.

Drove downtown and walked around the heart of the city - big, bright, busy, the citizens were modern and liberal, though the traffic was very wild west. Had lunch with Mogan, Lester and Bat (the world-class chemist turned commercial director) and hung out while they met the MCS chairman to try and pull some strings. Back to the brewery we met the marketing team, found out more about their activities and presented Tiger Translate. At the end of the working day we made our way to the Tiger tavern and imbibed some of the tastiest Tiger beer I've ever had (sugar, no maize) with Bat, the technical director and Gus from PNG. One pint turned into 6 and we got into detailed conversation about the stabilising of beer to withstand the extreme temperatures in Mongolia, distribution over winter, the current licensing issues, and eventually the ancient history of Mongolia! Bat was a fountain of knowledge and proved to be one of the smartest guys I've met in a long time.

With a late sunset around 9-10pm, the night was already on when we rolled into town and headed first to Marco Polo. There we were entertained by various dancing troupes, the highlight of which was about 8 girls, each 6 feet tall, dressed in eastern bloc military uniforms (though I'm not sure the skirts were quite that short during the Cold War) and doing a routine while a crackly record played Soviet marching tunes. Awesome.

Made a quick stop at Crazy Banana and had a Heineken, but not much was happening so Bat took us to Face - a great club where we drank more beer (surprise!) and shook it on the dance floor - the entire place was heaving on a Monday night! Enjoyed a feast of Korean food for supper and made it back to bed safely, secure in the knowledge that if anyone was to show you a good time in UB, Bat was the man.