11 days of mayhem - day 5

Been very slack in getting these online! Onto the next few days before the trip to Beijing.

The guys spent Thursday the 9th on a day trip to Hangzhou. The 90 minute train ride meant that they didn't get back until after 8:30, and they were both buggered from a busy day of walking. We wandered 10 minutes down the road to a noodle place that sells big plates of noodles for around $AUS2-3 each, and ate until we were stuffed. Once we got back to the apartment Cookie decided to call it a night so that he could recover, but Shotty was pretty keen to go out and do something so I took him to De La Coast.

De La Coast is a funky little bar just at the end of The Bund. I'd never actually been there before, but had read good things about it on some expat websites so figured we may as well give it a try. One thing in its favour - a full moon party was on that night, and they were having a $CNY100 open-bar night. That equates to about $AUS20 for as much alcohol you can drink between 9pm and 2am. Including wine/spirits, not just beer.

We got there just before 10pm...to find the place completely dead. There were roughly 5 other people in the entire place when we walked in. Unperturbed, we decided to stick it out and get our money's worth. The DJ was spinning some pretty decent tunes, so we grabbed a table near the (tiny) dancefloor and started downing the beverages.

An aside here - one of the things that everyone gets caught out with at bars in China are the reserved tables. You walk in to a place and see some big empty tables and go over to sit down...only to have a staff member come over and tell you that the table is reserved for people willing to spent a certain amount of money. Usually there's a price for the table, and then a 'minimum spend' on drinks etc. On an open bar night like the one we were at, you simply pay a set price for the table...and I guess it works out to be pretty reasonable if there's a big group.

Anyway, Shotty and I had just about the whole place to choose from, so we got some prime real-estate. While things initially looked pretty bad, within the next hour a steady stream of people came in, and before midnight the place was packed. Around this time we bumped into the manager of the place, a Californian guy named Rudy. Rudy invited us over to his VIP area and started organising drinks for us. Not such a big deal since it was an open bar, but it was nice having drinks brought over for us instead of having to go get them. We started things off with something that I almost guarantee I will never try again - a double-shot of tequila. A 60ml shot glass full of the evil liquid. They didn't have lemon and salt, and instead gave us lime to suck on after downing the shot. As Shotty put it, it's the only shot he's ever done where he had to gulp twice - you do the shot, and it's still not finished!

We stayed in the VIP area with Rudy until the place closed. The DJ really was playing some good tunes, so we had a little mini dance-off between the three of us at one point (in our own little area, not out on the main floor). A Japanese guy that Rudy knew arrived soon after this, so Shotty and I took it in turns to dazzle him with our extremely limited knowledge of the Japanese language. And when I say limited, we were able to introduce ourselves and say how nice it was to meet him...and that's about it. Awesome.

Finally the place shut just after 2, so we wandered out the front and got into a taxi. Did remarkably well in resisting the urge to kick on at another venue, but considering I was having Monday off I knew I had to show up to work on Friday, so we decided to go home. A good thing too, as I was pretty shabby the next morning. We ended up drinking a lot more alcohol than we thought we would in the space of 4 hours :)