Olympics bring peace and love to Ulaanbaatar

Last time I hog-the-blog. Especially with my Olympic sentimentality. :)

So, July 1, 2008 was a pretty eventful night in Ulaanbaatar. We had ourselves a nice Molotov cocktail-throwin', political party headquarters-burnin', night stick-beatin', tear gasin', rubber-bulletin', live round-firin', election-denouncin', State of Emergency good time! I know some of you were worried about me, others were worried about me starting the riot. (Thanks to all for the emails and enquiries!) It looked a lot worse on TV than it was, as it was only contained to one square, but a few poor folks did get shot dead, and several hundred were rounded up by the po'lice. It wasn't nice, my parents nearly died of fright, and I was really glad to catch a ride out of the city the next day. [I didn't take the photo, it's stolen from AFP. I'm not stupid enough to go where the tear gas is.]

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Well, about 6 short weeks later, on August 14, 2008, judoka N. Tuvshinbayar won the very first ever Olympic gold medal for Mongolia. (That's him in white, putting on what looks to me like a fine kata guruma throw.) This time, the entire city went completely mad, but it was the best final night in Ulaanbaatar I could have ever hoped for.

The street party started in the evening with people ripping up and down the streets honking and waving flags - and getting completely drunk in the bars and patios and merrily singing heroic songs in enormous, joyous, wasted choirs.

I went out around midnight after I saw a huge crowd on TV in the same square where the riot had been - except before, precisely at midnight, the prez had called in the army and tanks rolled in - and now the prez and all his political friends and opponents were crying and dancing and yelling all kinds of patriotic things to the happiest crowd of people you ever seen. Complete strangers were hugging each other, high fiving on the street, dancing and singing together. True love. And there were many more thousands out for the party than had been for the fight.

I won't describe too much more in words, a few of my photos and videos should do the trick. One thing I'll mention, though: There were actually people shaking the hands of and high-fiving the cops who were stuck directing human and car traffic in the main street - whereas six weeks earlier, cops and protesters had laid on some savage beatings on each other in the very same street. Right on. Peace out.

Turn this one up to hear the singing!