New Year Part 2

We arrived in KL centre around mid afternoon and checked into our hotel. The hotel was pretty nice, perhaps not everything that had been expected, but for what it cost and its location we were more than happy with everything. I needed to buy some shoes for the evening and we needed to eat so we set out the shopping centre next to the Twin Towers.

Tasty food was first on the agenda of course and I ate some BBQ chicken and rice followed by a bowl of beef meatball noodle soup. It was all excellent of course! Shoe shopping was a rapid exercise (I'm not a big shopper) and I managed to pick up a nice pair of Italian leather shoes for just over thirty quid. They will go particularly well with the hand tailored suit I have also purchased - I had my measuring up done on New Year's Eve and have my first fitting on Thursday.

When it came to leaving the shopping centre the heavens had opened. It is monsoon season here at the moment and so it tends to pour it down for at least a couple of hours a day. It was getting late and we needed to get back to the hotel to get ready and get in our free drinks in the Executive club bar so we decided to just make a break for it. You would not believe how wet you can get in a monsoon in just 5 minutes!

We met in the bar for a few drinks before going out to the club for the night. The way that clubs work over here is very different to England. We phoned up the day before to book a table and order our booze. When you arrive you then get shown to your table and they bring out the bottles of spirits and mixers. For the rest of the night the mixers are just topped up (for free) and you help yourself to the spirits. Entry to the club, our table, two bottles of vodka and a bottle of Jack Daniels cost us about twenty five pounds each which we thought was a bargain.

The club was brilliant, absolutely jam packed and with more glow sticks on display than you have ever seen. Everyone got a welcome pack at they entered containing glow sticks, whistles and party poppers. It was almost like being a part of some strange rave culture. The countdown to New Year was pretty soon after we arrived so we were nicely sober to be able to take everything in and then get on with the serious business of polishing off the alcohol. As well as the eight of us, Doug's friends Shirley and Carl joined us for a while and Carl briefly helped me to drink some of the Jack Daniels. Everyone else was on the vodka though and so when the whisky bottle was empty I was feeling a little drunk.

The evening was ended in a rather bizarre style when someone let of some CS gas in the other side of the club and everyone made a swift escape. Half of us didn't even really notice what had happened we just thought they were chucking everyone out so the night wasn't spoilt at all and we trotted back to the hotel to continue the party there.

After a row with room service about getting some food, Rich and I decided that we needed to eat and headed back out onto the streets to find some curry. We ended up in a small roadside cafe eating chicken curry and egg roti and were invited to join a group of Malaysian lads who were also out eating. They were quite amused by us and we think they may have been having a few laughs at our expense, but they were nice enough and it was good fun to have a chat with some other locals. Susie will be entertained to hear that they were very interested in whether I had a sister!!

We finally crashed out about 5:30 am after a quality evening. For all the New Year parties that had been an anti-climax - this made up for the lot!