Our Saturday Night

Jess and I decided to go out Saturday night. Friday night consisted of some world-class ping pong with a turkish guy who once won a gold medal in Russia (what kind of gold medal, who knows? More than I've won for ping pong). So Saturday we would see some Mongolian nightlife. We started at a place that didn't have much going on (it was next to a place at which we once saw a fake deer in a pit of balloons - some sort of insane christmas decoration). We left and went to another somewhat nameless place. It was decorated with some flair, and had buttons on the boothe wall (all Mongolian bars have boothes) that called your server. I know this because I was trying to figure our what the button did, when server came and politely let me know that I was continuing to call her. We played a little "our past trivia" in which many of you played a role and generally had a nice conversation.

Then the night began.

It started with a severely inebriated man falling off his bar stool and right onto his face on the dirty tile floor. He layed there for a while while the bouncer exhorted him to get up. The bouncer was having a difficult time lifting him off the floor, so I helped him (honorary samaritan bouncer). To my surprise they did not throw him out in the subzero temperatures, but put him in an empty booth and a server dabbed his bloody lip with a napkin. For the next 30 minutes or so, he slipped in and out of consciousness; taking his lucid (and I use that term loosely) moments to yell in full voice and falsetto. We decided to buy him a bottle of water. He sipped the water, then spit it out. Apparently the water had some effect and the man got to his unsteady feet. The staff took this opportunity to push him out the door. Oh he tried to fall to the ground, but there were to many hands on him.

Next, I met a young man in the bathroom who decided to test his English out while we did our business. An opportune time. He turned out to be an interesting enough guy. Jessica and I sat with him and his girlfriend for a while. He is studying to be a doctor and he has a love of expensive watches. We talked for a while and then he and his girlfriend decided to sing us some traditional Mongolian songs. He started somewhat softly, but really hit some uncomfortably loud crescendos. This was the first sign he was getting rather drunk. This devolved into him making out with his girlfriend (again, uncomfortable), then some staring into space with a vague, somewhat slackjawed look. Three uncomfortable strikes and you are out. We decided to leave.

It was about 2:30 AM, but in lieu of heading home we decided to check out a local nightclub, The Haifa Nightclub. Why name your club after an Israeli city? No answers inside, just really loud techno music and sickeningly long periods of strobe light. When we got there I drank my first beer quit quickly. So quickly in fact that the server brought a flashlight over and checked under the table to see if I had hidden it. From this point, Jessica danced well, I danced ridiculously, and we got lots of people to make a dance circle. I pulled out my best breakdancing. I picked up a very small Mongolian lady (possibly a dwarf) and swung her around. I also pretended to dirty dance behind a rather sketchy character that was harrassing many of the females on the dance floor. A Kung Fu fight (or some such martial art. don't hold me to Kung Fu) almost broke out. We went home at 5:30 am. I didn't even feel the skin-stinging Mongolian wind chill on the way home.