130. Not a screwed up day and night
I had a couple of friends visit this week. One of my friends was visiting from from Philippines and had a work client meeting in the city. She just has a couple of days of free time before she returns back to Philippines. Another friend of mine came from France, but he's doing a long SE Asia tour. He just flew in from Manila and wanted to have a break from beaches and sleepy coastal towns.
I spent the afternoon with my French friend and was showing him around the city center. I met him near the train station and he greeted me warmly. He's a bit shy and introverted and usually doesn't go drinking often, but I invited him to the pub crawl just to shake things up. He accepted and was actually pretty keen on exploring the nightlife a bit more. I wanted to give him a short city tour before the barathon adventure.
We ate at a local nasi kandar spot in the city center. I ordered us both some nasi goreng ayam (fried rice chicken), a traditional stir fry dish. He wasn't used to the spiciness and flavor, but was a really good sport about it. I almost ate half of my meal before I noticed that there was a screw in my rice. A literal screw in my meal. We were both bewildered.
The staff who saw this immediately removed the screw off of my plate before I took a photo. I really wanted to take a photo of this. It was crazy. Anyway, we got a free roti as an apology. I was kinda shocked, kinda laughing my ass off. That's so bizarre.
My friend and I took the train and walked over to the park. While taking our city walk, we were playing a game called "Guess the Tourist," which involves us trying to figure out which country a tourist is from based on their appearance, accent, or the words that they say. I've been winning these games. It's actually pretty easy to distinguish different tourists based on their shoes.
"Where I'm from, we've never had giant buildings like this. I've never seen so many skyscrapers." my friend told me. I didn't realize that the big city skylines weren't a common thing in many different places. It was cool to see a different perspective from a friend who knew nothing and was experiencing a lot of things all at once.
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When night rolled around, I helped organize the pub crawl with my host friends. We were busy making drinks, greeting other pub crawl guests, and just trying to plan for the busy night ahead. My friend from the Philippines showed up and we got to gossiping right away. I desperately needed the tsismis (gossip) of the night. Hot tea makes for a lovely get-together.
My French friend came around and he was a bit hesitant at first. Luckily, alcohol is a social lubricant and he had a lovely time adjusting to the group dynamic. I kept busy mingling with a bunch of Europeans today.
Here's the roster of the pub crawl today. I memorized 6 names in total! I already know my friends.
- Two guys from Switzerland. They're from the German part of Switzerland. They spoke a very funny dialect of Swiss German that I could somewhat make out. As the night went on, they got more and more plastered and their German intensified.
- A doctor man from Ireland who was very lovely. We had a great time talking about the current season of US RuPaul's Drag Race while we were grooving at the gay bar later that night.
- A really tall gentleman from Germany who has Ukrainian ancestry. He was the tallest guy I've seen yet and he was pretty cheerful.
- A cousin duo- a chatty and pretty lady from Jersey and her handsome cousin from Melbourne. The Australian kept trying to challenge me.
- My friend from France- a little shy, but he was such a good sport. He was really happy the entire night and he loosened up quite a bit.
- My friend from Philippines. She gave me so much gossip it was amazing.
My two other friends and I were the hosts of the pub crawl and we led the group to the usual itinerary of bars. Before we left the first place, we had a bunch of leis to give to our guests. My friend planned a game for the rest of the night.
The objective of the game is to not say these three words: "yes", "drink", and "toilets". If you say one of these words, then you have to give your lei to the person who caught you slipping. Easy enough rules, right?
A lot of people were tricked and bamboozled. I was really determined to win the game. I put up a good fight with the Australian fellow. He was neck and neck with me the entire night. However, at the very last bar, I relented because I was a little too lazy to carry so many leis on my neck. We were evenly matched that night and he was sort of taunting me and teasing me.
He was super keen on my friend from Philippines. I think that he had the idea that I was off-limits since I was one of the "pub crawl guardians." I quite like this title.
We ended up in a lot of interesting places that weren't in our original list of the usual bars we would hit up. I found myself at a gay bar with everyone and it was pretty fun. I had a great time, dancing and having a lot of fun.
The hosts of the crawl became so tired. We left at our 6th stop. We needed to eat something after that whole night of crawling... So we went to the nasi kandar and ate one of the blandest flavored IndoMie I've ever had.
What a successful night out!
~ a pub crawl guardian,
<3 K