It will be hard to top this as a highlight of the trip.

Amanda, Annette and i sat eating diner on the outdoor balcony of a cafe called chez bernard here in ulanbataar two nights ago. it was about nine p.m. and the sun was almost down, and the traffic had eased up on peace boulevard, the city's main street running in front of the place.

we'd arrived by train that morning at 6:20 and been taken to our rented apartment by a lady named zaya, through whom i'd set up accomodations a few months back. on the ride over (she runs a very thriving hostel business with multiple locations throughout the city and a fleet of vehicles in which her drivers ferry foreigners out into the countryside) in her honda CRV (same car as me - yeah!), zaya warned us about the darker side of ulanbataar. she said that HALF of her guests end up being pickpocketed. she said that they all think they know what they're doing, or that they're experienced travelers, but half of them still end up coming back to her office, crying that they've lost passports or credit cards.

the three of us had kept us in mind when we'd walked to the restaurant, leaving our passports (which had been on our bodies at all times in russia) in the apartment and carrying as little as possible with us. we sat and ate our meals and relaxed in the comfortable dusk, which made this relatively ugly city seem very nice indeed (when the communists controlled UB for 75 years, they forbade any money from being used on beautification projects).

the balcony had five or six tables on it, most of them filled with tourists. each table had a chair or two around it, and these two mongolian guys climbed the stairs to the balcony and began looking around. one of them started talking to me and annette in mongolian, motioning to an empty chair at our table and seemingly asking if he could take it. as we both were indicating that it would be okay, amanda screamed that the other guy was grabbing her purse from where it lay by her foot!

in a flash, annette dove at the guy as he held the purse like a running back holding a football and tried to squish his way between the customers and back towards the stairway. he found it hard to do this with annette wrapping herself around his legs and dragging him to the ground as she fell out of her chair. i jumped up and blocked his way. amanda grabbed her purse. as the guy was squirming free from annette, i grabbed him around the neck from behind in a bear hug and then yanked both of his arms behind his back. he squirmed for a while and i wondered what would happen if i were to bash him against the brick wall to my left a few times. i don't know how long i held him for -- not more than ten or 15 seconds -- but no restaurant staff were rushing out to help and no police seemed to be nearby, so i let the guy wiggle out of my grasp. he and his partner - who had been standing, dumbfounded probably, next to me the whole time - took off down the stairs. i wish that one of us had been taking pictures of the event; i would not be above re-enacting it before we leave with a pair of paid mongolian men as stand-ins for the thieves.

annette was down on the ground still, having fallen and hit hard but fortunately having avoided the large concrete block that served as a base for shade umbrellas during the day. hitting that in her fall would have been most unfortunate, and i couldn't help but think of "million dollar baby" as i returned to my seat.

the scene was kind of like after a fight in an old-west saloon. everything just went back to normal. no one came to talk to us. i apologized to the germans sitting next to us for disturbing their meal. we noticed that, in the fracas, the thief had lost his sunglasses and his jacket! ha! serves him right. we went back to our meal, laughing about what had just happened, counting our blessings, and wondering how much this story (which has been related here in its simplest, purest, truest form) will be embellished as time goes on.