New Years Eve, Asian Style
Friday, January 18th, 2008
We got really lucky on New Year’s Eve-we found out that the hostel where we were staying was on the very street that they would be closed off for all the New Year’s festivities. They said it was kind of like a mini Times Square with everyone packing into the street to do the big countdown to midnight. So that evening, we put on our finest clothes (that means Christy wore her one skirt and I wore my one button down shirt, yes we are getting very tired of wearing the same clothes for the past 5 months) and headed out for the fun. We had dinner overlooking the main square where people were packing in and they had a great Malaysian band playing. After dinner we headed down and got right in the thick of the crowd. We seemed to be the only white people in the whole area but people treated us great. Everyone had canisters of shaving cream and silly string they were spraying at each other. The teenagers went wild with the stuff and would just cover any one passing by in the stuff. It was so neat because Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, so almost no one was drinking alcohol, which helped keep things under control. I decided that we needed to join in on the fun and bought some cans of shaving cream. When I came back Christy said “This may be another very dumb thing that you have done” I didn’t quite understand what she meant until I looked around and saw everyone around us staring at us. They somehow knew I had a couple of spray cans and they were armed with theirs in case of retaliation. The deal was, if you didn’t have a spray bottle you were almost safe, but if you did, you were a target for anyone else to unleash their spray on you. And what a great way to start off the New Year than to completely annihilate two whities from America. As soon as I figured it all out (ok, I’m the slower one in this relationship) it was too late and we were being blasted from all sides by this shaving cream goo. We tried to fight back but it was no use, there were too many of them and not enough of us. After they emptied there bottles on us, they all said “HAPPY NEW YEAR.” Another classic moment, seeing Christy standing there with white foam all over her saying “see you bozo, i told you.”
After a few beers and listening to a great band we decided it was time to do what we did best, go eat more food. So at 1 am we went to just grab a quick bite at one of the infamous hawker stands. Before we knew it, we had ordered a whole meal as big as our first dinner. So we started the new year off great by eating 2 dinners in one night, which probably means we will spend 2008 overweight. It was definitely a New Years Eve we won’t forget.
Steve