Muugi Muugi.

There is a hidden little cafe just two deciduous trees down from the depressing metallic pavillion housing my current guesthouse, which just this morning was flocked by a cohort of young and promising Peace Corpers, whom I plan to pester with the most prying tapestry of questions the guesthouse has ever borne witness to, once I've conceived of an erudite gambit. But so because I've finally learnt the jigsawy ways of the Mongolian Cyrillic, I can tell you said cafe's name is 'Inji Cafe'. It took one minute of standing like a scarecrow in an Arctic-like wind in front the cafe's welcoming placard to decipher this much. Inji Cafe is the cosiest enclave I have lucked upon in Ulaanbaatar - and cosy is paramount in conditions that freeze livestock to death where they stand - is where I drink a lot of three-in-one instant American coffee for breakfast, by candlelight, green curtains festooning my booth. It also happens to be where Muugi drinks a lot of three-in-one instant coffee for breakfast, by herself, by candlelight, if not regaling lonesome travellers that aren't Russian, like me, with all the different jokes she can conceive of within the caste of fifty-six English words she knows, green curtains festooning her booth. There ensued a deluge of giggles, hiccups, miscommunication-induced silences, more guttural Mongul giggles and coffee, thence we'd arranged to rendezvous, 7pm, in the same booth we met, Inji Cafe, for a three-in-one instant coffee, and such and such and such.

7.05pm. I'm less late than usual. Mongolian wrestling on a derelict television in the corner, muted, riveting, two nylon-pinched men locked in an ambiguous embrace. The heavy-eyelidded staff watch, pretend to watch, slouched in seats-too-small by the crumbly wall. It's okay, I gesture, Allow me to find my own seat. I'll find Muugi. Around the corner ten radiant candles glow, one per table; forty spotless white plates shine, four per table, all dressed up with no-one to serve. No Muugi, nor anybody. I stand there like a cretin, re-planning my evening, suddenly dulled a few shades: tea, mutton, bed? pootuunghwa, cinema, bed? karoake, billiards, bed? No-one to play billiards with.

A muffled burp from the ether. I whisk around the corner to the farthest unexplored adjunct of Inji Cafe, trailing the burp, perhaps the first burp ever trailed. There's a booth in the corner with conspicuously drawn curtains-

Muugi.

She smiles a glittery smile. Pink blouse, bitten fingernails. The only girl in Mongolia with dreadlocks. Her first words are slurry: "5 beer, 4 coffee, 2 cigarette, 6 steam rolls. I am wait for you." I'm late, but she early, it seems. Her 'steam roll' is our 'spearmint gum'. I sit across from Muugi. With a portraited view she seems to sway, like I'd imagine most Russians on the Trans-Siberian to, side to side with the wobbling train, side to side with the vodka veins. I play-slap her on the cheek for galavanising purposes. She screams, overreacts, plays it up with sardonic gamemanship. She is an expert. But in doing so, she knocks over her (5th or 6th?) frosty pint of beer, maximum fanfare. Then silence. Two more beers arrive at once as a twisted facade emerges on her face. Something is coming. She stands up like a rocket in lift-off and stretches her arms into a biblical set of wings-

"Happy birpday to you.
Happy birpday to you.
Happy birpday to Muugi.
Happy birpday to you."

Muugi's birthday, Inji Cafe by my guesthouse, behind drawn green curtains.

Please stand now and join me in laughing at the entirely laughworthy night that ensued, awesome and absurd, with Muugi, my blithe Mongolian guide, who owns the dancefloor when she wiggles like a jack-in-the-box, who would rather ice-skate in shoes than sleep, who gives her money to the poor uncued, who runs from furious taxi-drivers sans paying, laughs echoing endlessly into the frigid night sky, and whom it is entirely probable has spent time behind bars for past indiscretions, such is the degree of her mischief. She is just the kind of bloodwarming company I need at the moment, and then some.