Happy New Year and a little bit of detainment.

Sahp! Gau! Baat! Chat! Luk! Ngh! Sei! Saam! Yih! Yat! Lihng! This is what I heard at midnight in Hong Kong. Like the countdown, everything about my New Years was completely different than every New Years past…and it was fantastic. See for yourself:

Outside our hotel in Hong Kong. L-R: Steph, Kara, Elena, Mouse, meDrinking at 7-11 with Kara (in dresses to boot!)...because we're classy like that. Just a couple of the random Chinese people who found the 5 foreign girls in dresses highly entertaining. Entertaining enough, infact, to draw gawking crowds and be asked by several people for pictures. Waiting in line in Lan Kwai Fong, where we counted down to 2006 in Cantonese. Steph, Mouse and I still in line... Finally inside Lan Kwai Fong (with Luke from England) and way too happy to have drinks in our hands.Having a great time on the dance floor with Alex, also from England.Steph with the cute Englishman.Not so sure where the gold sequins came from, but it looked fun.Elena and Mouse We went back to Lan Kwai Fong on our last night in Hong Kong. There were approximately 15,000 less people in the area.
The night started off in absolute hilarity. The New Years celebrations in Hong Kong were enormous, but since the Chinese have a different New Year, the parties were only in contained areas of the city...namely NOT the area our hotel was in. You can imagine what a spectacle 5 white girls in cocktail dresses made walking up the streets of China. People were crowding around to take pictures and stare, so we played the game right back and starting snapping pictures of the crowd we drew. Very entertaining.

We went to an area called Lan Kwai Fong, which for those of you who have ever gone out in Hamilton, is along the lines of a really huge Hess Village. It’s roughly equivalent to a couple of city blocks in size, and it’s up on a giant hill that is not accessible by car. Basically it’s just a street party every night of the year. Steph and I went last time we were in Hong Kong and had no problems, so we did NOT foresee the thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of people who had the same idea as we did. They controlled the crowds by making the line double back and wind around the blocks adjacent to Lan Kwai Fong. We waited for probably 2 hours to get in, and sadly, we rang the New Year in angry, sober and waiting in line with several thousand other angry, sober people. We got so frustrated a couple of times that we almost turned around and went back to the hotel. We powered through and after finally getting into Lan Kwai Fong, we found an awesome bar that was full of really great people and playing really great music. We went from angry and sober to drunk and happy in under 5 minutes. The night turned out to be the best New Years I’ve had.

It was an awesome New Years that was supposed to be followed by an awesome visit from Jordan. For me, Jordan’s cross-ocean trip began and ended in 2 hours at the Kaohsiung airport. Due to some difficulty with his passport he was denied boarding the last leg of his flight from Japan-Taiwan. He was unable to get a hold of me, so I went to the airport to pick up an MIA Jordan, or “white man” as the non-English speaking security guy who was helping me preferred to call him. At this point things are up in the air. He may or may not make it to Taiwan in a few days and I may or may not make it to Tokyo for the weekend. Instead of being in Taroko Gorge with Jordan last night, as was originally planned, I was here:
Having some drinks with a few of the great people I’ve met over my 8.5 months being away from home.