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Mandy and Neil Go Global
Hi all
So after our intrepid guides had left us, we headed back to the hotel, showered and headed out for food. Which turned into a drink fest. About fookin time. Me and Kimbers led the way, necking Sambuccas and shorts until the others finally gave in (or got embarrassed by our noise) and joined in. We stayed there until 1 ish, when the owner decided she really wanted to close, and brought us the bill. Uh oh. Serious problem with the bill. We drunkenly added up the drinks that were on there and realised we were being blatantly charged for drinks we hadn't had. Cue much polite arguing, with the owner saying that we really had drunk that much and that her Sambucca bottle was half gone. 'We don't care how much Sambucca has gone, maybe your staff drank it' was our line of reasoning. After things started to get a bit heated, we entered a Mexican standoff, with both us and the staff refusing to talk to each other. At this point the Fench freaks turned up.
These were a group of lads plus one girl and were Parisians. As such, they were weird as fook. We'd met them a few days earlier in Hue where I got beaten at pool by a one armed man (seriously, I'm not John Kimble, it's true) and we'd thought them a pretty strange bunch even then. One of them (who was studying at film school to be a director - says it all really) kept laughing when I said stuff. Even though it wasn't funny. Or meant to be. He just kept laughing and saying 'That's french humour, I love it' which again says it all. This time about French humour. I just had a thought. If I'm a natural at French humour, does this mean I have some gallic in me? Oh dear God, cut it out, CUT IT OUT! And please don't mention this to my mum, cos she'll have me weaing a f***in beret on my wedding day as well as a kilt. Frank Spencer meets Braveheart...
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, they turned up at the bar in Hoi An looking for somewhere to have a late drink. No probs the herd of moto drivers who'd arrived to watch the theatrics over the bill replied, we'll take everyone to The Full Moon Bar, it's open all night. Some of them set off with our froggie chums and we promised to follow as soon as we could make the woman see that we couldn't possibly have drunk that much booze.
In order to further this ambition, we invited the owner over to go through the bill drink by drink. It turns out, we were right. And so was she. For some reason they had two bills on one sheet. The one on the left was ours (the one with the big added up figure underlined at the bottom) and the one on the right was someone else's. Much shamefacedness and apologising for calling her a cheat and her staff thieves and we were off on the motos and headed for The Full Moon Bar.
Which was actually a really nice little bar. Well it was in my inebriated state anyway. Laura immediately took control of the music (I love the way she does that), whilst i settled down to watch the equivalent of Match of The Day with some random vietnamese fella. Who I drunkenly shouted at and berrated every time something happened that I didn't agree with. He moved to the bar after about 10 minutes of this, but I continued berrating his empty seat. s*** I don't care if anyone's there to listen or not.
What followed was much dancing on the part of the frenchies and the girls, and much sitting drunkenly trying to talk to people on my part. This job was made far easier by Kimbers doing her drunken rescue act. What she does is this. She looks around the bar for the saddest loneliest sitting-on-the-end-of-the-bar-alone-iest person she can find and brings them over to the group, introduces them and then f***s off somewhere else. I'm not sure what pleasure she gets out of this, other than its ability to really embarass the guy and make everyone else feel really unconfortable. This time it was a big fat Scots guy called Paddy. Nope, I don't understand that one either, surely he should have been called Jock. A joke he didn't really appreciate. Last time in Luang Pruabang it had been a Canadian guy called Rob. Who we kept bumping into everywhere in Laos and who kept greeting us like old friends just to try and make himself appear popular. It didn't work. Thinking about it, he was a big fat guy too. Hmm, I think I see a pattern emerging. Its a good job we already knew Johnny before we met her...
Anyway, at some point during the night (3.30, 4.00 maybe) Mand and Lau had had enough and jumped on one of the motos lurking outside and headed off, leaving me, Kimbers, Paddy and an ever dwindling supply of the frenchies, along with a couple of other randoms who to be honest I'd introduced myself to about 3 times and who now ran away every time I lurched towards them to ask them their names. I was just a little tipsy you understand.
Must be time for a game of pool then.
There was a Geordie guy getting whooped by some local guys, who insisted on playing for money. I watched with serious distatse as this guy embarassed himself, me and the whole of England with his piss poor playing, and as he promptly forked over 50,000 dong to the locals. Must be my turn then. Then a funny thing happened. I got a conscience. These local boys were ok, but not up to the job of taking on a proper pool player like I drunkenly believed myself to be.
'You play for money, you play for money' they rather pushily told me as I staggered up to the table. But there was my conscience banging in my head 'they only earn a dollar a day max, don't do it you Imperialist b******.' So I declined. Repeatedly. And when they finally realised I wasn't going to play for money they looked at me with something approaching disdain and decided they were just going to thrash me on the pool table anyway.
I four balled the first guy in about 2 minutes flat. He looked at me with a kind of disbelieving look in his eye, shook my hand and sat down to watch his friend get his revenge for him. I five balled him in about the same time. As I shook his hand, I asked if he still wanted to play for money. He just smiled and shook his head. One up for the conscience, one down for the 50,000 dong I could've just made. But, feeling like superman I then got beaten by guy number one's girlfriend. Ah well, such is life. And to be fair, she had 6 balls left on the table when I potted the black and the white at the same time. Ark at me trying to justify being beaten by a girl. Like it doesn't happen regularly.
Kimbers came over looking for a game and we hit the balls around for a few minutes while various people came over and jeered at our terrible shooting, and the suddenly the lights went on and it was time to leave. It was half past six I suppose, so you can't blame them.
Outside, we drunkenly haggled with the only moto driver left (my threat to walk held no water as we were about 10km from the hotel) and me and Kimbers both hopped on and we were away. He gave Kimbers his cap to hold, and she promptly threw it away/dropped it (I'll let you decide) and despite her rather feeble attempts to get his attention, he just carried on going. Back at the hotel, we handed him the cash, and when he asked for his hat there was a pregnant pause before Kimbers decided to take the moral high ground. 'It's back on the road near The Full Moon Bar. I tried to tell you I'd dropped it but you wouldn't stop. Therefore its your fault.' Not a bad drunken argument it has to be said. But the guy responded with a better one. 'You owe me 20,000 for the hat'.
After a small degree of haggling, he accepted 10,000 and was off. Kimbers was up for going straight out for breakfast then another bar (I don't know what's up with that girl, I really don't) but there was no way I was going for more beer. Not when I knew we'd be sat in a tailor's shop for hours, in the blazing heat for the rest of the day. So we headed off to bed, knowing the hangover was going to be crushing when it came time to be up. And it was. Truly.
On a sidenote to our time at The Full Moon Bar, on her return to her hotel room, Kimbers saw a sign warning people not to go there. Ever. Because people get robbed in there all the time. On checking her bag the next morning Kimbers found that this was 100% true. She'd had about 2 million dong taken from her bag. And there was me worrying about taking 50,000 of the little b******s. Twat.
Laters all
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