Men in underware and Ben's cult

Ohhhhh manly men and their games.
It's intentional that we're in Mongolia at this time. There's this little nation-wide celebration called Naadam. This competion used to be called "Three Manly Sports" - but during the Soviet reign, the communist wanted more equal rights for women so they renamed the 750 year old tradition Naadam. But it's still the same kind of thing. Wrestling. Archery. Horsemanship.




Today was the opening ceremony which lasted an hour and a half in an incredibly crowded arena. I think the entire country was there. There were horses dressed up real pretty:



And lots of people in great costumes, including these Shaman:


The crowds were packed and enjoying the show... except this little girl


Ben, Amanda and I sure liked it


there were lots of umbrellas in the crowd - first because of rain, then because of sunshine:


There were lots of wrestlers


Ben was interviewed by the Mongolian media:


There were even more wrestlers waiting for their turn:


When we left the stadium, we learned just how many Ben fans there are in Mongolia. This was the first of MANY people who tried to take pictures of or with Ben. Now for those of you who may remember, this was similar to my experiences traveling India. It's insane. Ben was threatening to beat this dude up:


I had my own little fan club:


There was lots of great food and little shops surrounding the arena:






But most of them were hard to get to because Ben drew a crowd everywhere we walked. Literally, we called him Forrest Gump for most of the day. Some people followed us for over 30 minutes. Circles formed around Ben:


He tried to speak Mongolian with them:


Ben tried to eat (or threaten to eat) a Mongolian man who touched his butt:


me and my fancy new hat:


Ben snagged this guy's phone (this happened many, many times) throughout the day. initially, I would just get in someone's face who was trying to take a picture of ben - stuff my camera in their face instead, but Ben was getting a little irate (undurstandable) so when someone was trying to take his picture on their cell phones, he would grab the phone and put it in his pocket until he could get an apology:



And on our drive back to our apartment, our cabby got a flat and then left us by the side of the road...




What a day.

We have archery and horsemanship tomorrow out in the country.