RECAP: New Year's Eve
For NYE Reggie & I were in Xian where we had met up with some other friends of mine, making a group of five Aussie girls. The Chinese don't really celebrate New Year's like we do (as their New Year is later) so it was fairly quiet in town and we figured we’d just find a bar and have a few drinks.
We set out quite early (7pm-ish) and found that most bars didn’t open til 8pm. We eventually found one that was open and as it fit our criteria (ie. open and serving drinks) we decided that it would do.
It turns out that five white girls entering a bar certainly turns heads, as just about everyone in the place came over to have a look at us. Seriously. It was like we were a zoo exhibit or something. We were shown to a table and asked what we wanted to drink... you’d think that ordering a drink in a bar would be straightforward enough but apparently not.
In China you can't just order a mixed drink ie. vodka and lemonade, you have to order a WHOLE BOTTLE of the spirit and then buy the mixers separately. As it was still early we decided we'd order beers instead. For some reason though they wouldn't sell us beers unless we bought a DOZEN. Bizzaro. There was a drinks menu but being in Chinese we couldn't understand any of it except for B52s... so we ordered one of them each. Out came the shots as expected but we didn’t want to be drinking them all night so we needed to expand our horizons a little. We just took a punt and pointed at something in the same section of the drinks menu and ended up with green cocktail-type things.
While we were waiting for our drinks a woman came up and asked whether we wanted "some guys to come and sit with us?" We were already feeling uncomfortable as it was with everyone staring at us so it was at about that point that we decided we were ready to move on somewhere else. After finishing our drinks we got up to leave only to be told that we couldn't. We weren’t allowed to leave the bar! It was a bit difficult to understand the reasoning but we were told it was not safe to leave and we would have to stay. Of course I just headed for the door and eventually the manager led us out the back entrance. I have no idea what that was about but we later realised we were too slow, we should have said we'd stay if they gave us free drinks!
We ended up at a massive underground club where the music was dodgy but after succumbing and ordering the vodka by the bottle, well two bottles later the music didn't seem to worry us much and we were up on the podium dancing. We’d had to go through a metal detector on the way in which was a first for me, but the crowd was very well behaved and the people were all pretty friendly. Chinese bars are so funny, really different and great for people-watching. We had our own waiter who would appear from nowhere to fill our glasses as soon as they were empty even though the vodka and mixers were on the table and we were perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. We never had to go to the bar and every time we ordered a bottle of vodka we got a big bowl of fruit salad too! Bonus! They had go-go dancers up on various podiums around the place and as it was a huge club and very crowded, no-one seemed to give the five white girls a second glance. There was a countdown at midnight but it certainly wasn’t a big deal and after that the music improved a lot.
Unfortunately there were no kebab vans on the way home but there were plenty of street stalls and between us we had a couple of bowls of dumpling soup and fried sandwiches liberally coated with chilli... a more than suitable alternative!
We set out quite early (7pm-ish) and found that most bars didn’t open til 8pm. We eventually found one that was open and as it fit our criteria (ie. open and serving drinks) we decided that it would do.
It turns out that five white girls entering a bar certainly turns heads, as just about everyone in the place came over to have a look at us. Seriously. It was like we were a zoo exhibit or something. We were shown to a table and asked what we wanted to drink... you’d think that ordering a drink in a bar would be straightforward enough but apparently not.
In China you can't just order a mixed drink ie. vodka and lemonade, you have to order a WHOLE BOTTLE of the spirit and then buy the mixers separately. As it was still early we decided we'd order beers instead. For some reason though they wouldn't sell us beers unless we bought a DOZEN. Bizzaro. There was a drinks menu but being in Chinese we couldn't understand any of it except for B52s... so we ordered one of them each. Out came the shots as expected but we didn’t want to be drinking them all night so we needed to expand our horizons a little. We just took a punt and pointed at something in the same section of the drinks menu and ended up with green cocktail-type things.
While we were waiting for our drinks a woman came up and asked whether we wanted "some guys to come and sit with us?" We were already feeling uncomfortable as it was with everyone staring at us so it was at about that point that we decided we were ready to move on somewhere else. After finishing our drinks we got up to leave only to be told that we couldn't. We weren’t allowed to leave the bar! It was a bit difficult to understand the reasoning but we were told it was not safe to leave and we would have to stay. Of course I just headed for the door and eventually the manager led us out the back entrance. I have no idea what that was about but we later realised we were too slow, we should have said we'd stay if they gave us free drinks!
We ended up at a massive underground club where the music was dodgy but after succumbing and ordering the vodka by the bottle, well two bottles later the music didn't seem to worry us much and we were up on the podium dancing. We’d had to go through a metal detector on the way in which was a first for me, but the crowd was very well behaved and the people were all pretty friendly. Chinese bars are so funny, really different and great for people-watching. We had our own waiter who would appear from nowhere to fill our glasses as soon as they were empty even though the vodka and mixers were on the table and we were perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. We never had to go to the bar and every time we ordered a bottle of vodka we got a big bowl of fruit salad too! Bonus! They had go-go dancers up on various podiums around the place and as it was a huge club and very crowded, no-one seemed to give the five white girls a second glance. There was a countdown at midnight but it certainly wasn’t a big deal and after that the music improved a lot.
Unfortunately there were no kebab vans on the way home but there were plenty of street stalls and between us we had a couple of bowls of dumpling soup and fried sandwiches liberally coated with chilli... a more than suitable alternative!
posted by bvc @ 1:17 PM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home