New Year 2005/6

Happy New Year! Long time no write. Happy Christmas too! Christmas in Shantou might have been good, but I was in Guangzhou fighting in a taekwondo competition, so I wouldn’t know.

I was, however, in Shantou this past weekend, which was New Year, well the solar calender new year. This isn’t such an important event at all here, in fact a lot of my friends just went to bed after a nice meal and a bit of tv at home, so I took the opportunity to party with predominantly foreign friends, it being a foreign festival.

We ended up at LA Bar about five minutes before midnight, just in time for the countdown, which really kicked the night off. From then on in it became one of those nights… Unfortunately I ate something very bad for dinner and spent midnight to 4am either throwing up or waiting to throw up, but the staff were very nice and let me use an ice bucket.

It seemed like the whole of Shantou, or at least everyone I know who wasn’t at home watching tv, were in LA that night, which was nice. Generally it was a very good New Year.

I finished the night with other friends I met in LA, but the group of foreigners I came with I think went on benders in twos and threes. I am already being told about friends of friends who were in LA and saw lots of foreigners dancing on a podium, a Portuguese and a Central American boy discovered just how many rooms LA had, because they went into them all wishing everyone happy new year, and discovered a room full of models in the process, they were very happy, and as I was leaving I passed another Portuguese and a South African boy in a big crowd (they don’t speak Chinese) pretending to ride someone’s go-faster motorbike just outside the entrance, posing for photos. What’s more, I think the owner was on the bike too.