Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

The day we returned from our trek to Ulgii was election day in Mongolia. The next day, when we were back in Ulaan Baatar, we saw news on the TV in the lobby. There was coverage of a violent protest going on with people throwing rocks at buildings and reporters excitedly talking into a moving camera. It had all the signs of live TV. The Mongolians working for the hotel were all watching the TV intensely. We found out from them that this protest was in Ulaan Baatar in front of the Communist party headquarters which is just a few blocks away from the hotel. The protesters were from the party that lost and they felt that the Communist party (the incumbent party) had tampered with the elections. We felt safe (and were safe) even though it was so close to us but it was interesting to learn more details in the next few days.

Mongolia is a young democracy (starting in 1990 when the USSR dismantled - no, Mongolia was not part of the USSR but it was heavily dependent on it) and all the Mongolians we spoke with were very concerned that this happened. They said this has not happened in Mongolia before. While we only saw rocks thrown on TV, it turns out that the Communist party headquarters was burned. Five people died, more than 300 were injured, and about 700 people were arrested.

Above, the burned Communist party headquarters in Ulaan Baatar

Especially interesting were the measures the government took to try to calm the situation down. For one, we got a different story depending on what TV channel you watched. During the event, the state-run channel showed what seemed to be a smaller protest with some people simply throwing rocks at a building. Other private channels, though, showed the building being burned as well as police hitting protesters. The following day, private TV channels were off the air, a state of emergency was declared, and sales of alcohol were banned. Also, major roads to the center of the city were blocked off.

We went to the Gobi for a few days and by the time we returned, things had returned mostly to normal. Unfortunately, an innocent bystander in all this was AeroMongolia whose offices are in the same building as the Communist party. All of their paper records, manifests, passenger lists, etc. were lost in the fire and from what we learned, they were scrambling to piece their business back together as fast as they could. We found this out because the next horse trek with our guides was leaving in a couple of days and their flight west was booked on AeroMongolia so they were involved in the mad scramble to piece things together.

If you want to learn more from an official news source, here are four articles on BBC World News as events progressed:

Mongolia votes in key elections

Mongolia calls state of emergency

Fatal clashes in Mongolia capital

Streets calm in riot-hit Mongolia

And if you want to learn some background about Mongolia, the CIA World Factbook (a great place to learn basics about any country) has their Mongolia page here.

- Dave

There are 3 airlines operating in Mongolia today - MIAT, the state-owned airline, and relative newcomers Aero Mongolia and EZnis Airways.  We flew on all three during our time in Mongolia.

While on the flights, I took a look at the in-flight magazines.  Here are some things I bet you did not know (listed in the order in which I read them):

1.  Aero Mongolia owns 60% market share of the domestic flights in Mongolia.

That made me feel good about the plane I was on.  At the time, I only knew of Aero Mongolia and MIAT, so I figured MIAT must own the rest of the market.  However, when we flew to the Gobi, we took EZnis Airways, and their magazine said:

2.  EZnis Airways owns 70% market share of the domestic flights in Mongolia.

Hmmm.  That made me wonder.  Those two numbers add up to 130% market share.  I guessed that the statistics were from two different years, but that still left a question about what kind of market share MIAT owned.  I doubted that MIAT would report that they owned negative 30% of the domestic market.  For those of you who are more visual thinkers, here is a bar chart:

Then I thought, “Maybe MIAT only does international flights to and from Mongolia.”  That would help explain things.  So, when I read MIAT’s airline magazine, I expected to see information only on international flights (we flew them out of Mongolia to Seoul), but to my surprise, the MIAT magazine said:

3.  “In 2007, MIAT had 398 domestic flights providing service to 26,251 passengers.”

They didn’t include a percentage, but if this statistic is true, their market share could not be a negative number!  It would in fact be positive. I tried to revise the chart with these numbers but I couldn’t make the math work.

The only thing I can assume is that someone accidentally printed an error in their in-flight magazine, because why would any marketing person use statistics that are misleading?*

- Meredith

* This is a joke, but is not meant to offend marketing people.  I am, when I’m working, technically a marketer, and I have many friends that are marketing people.  So it’s okay that I make fun of them.