We had a surprisingly early night yesterday for a group of guys who had just finished the Mongol Rally, but we were all exhausted and decided we could celebrate properly this evening. The Lion Boys' and Moron's are still young whippersnappers so they had gone out to a club last night. Chris and I sat up all night like worried parents waiting for The Lion Cubs to come home but they never did. In the morning we had breakfast then went back to our rooms to relax. We watched a few Russian sitcoms and an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants in Russian before we surfaced again for lunch. We had a really good ‘normal’ meal at the Irish Pub last night so we returned to the same table for lunch. I had ordered the stuffed cheeseburger yesterday and was told they didn't have it, so I tried again today. The waitress accepted my order then returned ten minutes later with a change of heart, clearly the chef didn’t fancy making a burger today either.

The others went for a walk around the city center and to do some shopping, but Adam and I decided to stay in the hotel and sort out the videos. Since each car had at least one video camera we had always said we would all swap of our footage at the end of the rally. The only problem was we hadn’t even slightly organised our videos when we dumped them on the external hard-drive, so I spent the entire afternoon filing then into countries. I know it's not particularly interesting or funny but that is all I did with my day. The positive side of this is that when nothing happens during a day it’s a lot quicker to write about, and since we are actually in western Russia and the blogs are only arriving in Ulaanbaatar I could do with the days being less eventful.

 

When the others came back they filled us in on the plan for our evening of celebration. There was a cinema showing Guardians of the Galaxy in English, so we were going to see that before dinner and drinks at The Adventurist's chosen hotel. To my surprise the cinema wasn't a man's house with a projector and a pirate copy of a film. It was a reasonably modern place with a whole bunch seats and everything, and at only $4 for a 3D film and popcorn it is probably more cost effective to drive to Mongolia anytime I want to see a film.

After the film had finished, the credits had rolled, and the post-credits scene had ended, we started to head towards The Office Hotel. Since there were 8 of us we needed two taxis, or a taxi and another car. The first group managed to wave down a taxi with no hassle leaving Chris, Sharkey, Jamie, and me to fend for ourselves. We tried hailing every single taxi that flew by on the busy street until a car stopped right beside us on the street. The male driver opened all the doors and kicked his wife and children into the cold then ushered us into the car. The wife shivered at Sharkey then quickly darted into the car to pick up a blanket for the youngest child sleeping in her arms. We felt like horrible human beings for the entire car journey across the city, but we felt better when we arrived and the driver tried to charge us 50,000 tugrik for a trip that should cost 5,000 - clearly his children are better off without his influence. After a lot of arguing we gave him 10,000 and walked away.

 

Inside the hotel we claimed our complimentary beer and ordered a Pizza. I went for the "combination" topping while Adam went for the "mixed" topping, when they came they were identical and both pretty poor. The hotel bar had a large poster with a table of finishing positions, we were around the 140th team out of 250 to successful conquer the 2014 Mongol Rally. We found Miles and James in the bar, they had been at a karaoke bar until 5a.m. and then slept on another team’s floor.  We were still sat in the bar enjoying ourselves when another two familiar faces walked in the bar - Rob and Katherine from our time in Iran. They had finished the rally today, but had finished it without Po. Po continued being a bastard all the way to Kazakhstan, where they had to leave him behind because they simply couldn't afford to keep fixing the constant problems. After a few hours and many beers we all signed one of the Mongol Rally posters hanging on the wall. That's when Rob decided to keep it as a souvenir and tore it off the wall, and that's when things got out of hand. Once one poster came off the wall it was a free for all, with the walls stripped bare in moments - including one which I managed to liberate from the clutches of the evil wall as my own souvenir. As soon as anarchy broke out we decided it was time to leave, on the way out the door we passed a Mongol Rally poster that said "These posters are coated with yak piss and camel semen – DO NOT STEAL" - clearly they're not aware what sort of people they attract to their events.