Hope everyone had a fun time on New Year’s Eve.  As for me, not 100% but better than 50%.

We started off with dinner at Himalaya, an Indian restaurant in Wanchai with a few friends. Some food highlights.

A prawn dish, didn’t catch the name.

Two of the people in our group were vegetarians and this cauliflower dish was the best thing we had all night.

The chicken tikka seemed slightly under done.

Lamb sagwala – well, may have misspelled it but you can see what it is – the classic lamb and spinach dish.

The verdict?  We won’t be going back here.  As I mentioned, the chicken tikka seemed under done, the samosas had a slightly burnt flavor to them, and the other dishes (excepting the cauliflower) seemed about average for Indian places in HK.

After that, over to, yes, Amazonia.   Well, why not?  I figured it was the only spot in Wanchai that has bands I know I’m gonna at least like.  And we have friends already there, too.

Except, on the walk over to the bar, I could feel my stomach slipping away.  By the time we reached there, roughly 10:30 PM or so, I was in bad shape.  I’m not gonna describe the men’s room at Amazonia to you, I’ll save you from that.  At least this early in the evening it wasn’t the cesspit it always becomes later in the night.  Eventually I got out of there and dashed over to 7-11 for some Imodium, which allowed me to make it through the next few hours.   Was it the under cooked chicken tikka?  Or was it my first-ever McDonald’s breakfast earlier in the day?  Whatever it was, my stomach is still grumbling.

And now, some random photos from the rest of our evening:

Kaktooz on stage as the midnight hour approaches.

The highlight of the annual Wanchai New Year’s Eve Parade – The Prince and Princess of the New Year:

I didn’t need to do the breath-tester.  With my stomach doing flip-flops, I steered clear of alcohol. And I hadn’t brought the car.

Here’s Crazy Peter.  Every night he’s parked outside of Joe Banana’s, looking for longer-haul fares.  He always asks me if I’m driving and if the answer is yes, always checks to see if I’m drinking.  Yet every time I’m not driving and tell him, “Okay, this is your chance to take us home,” he always says someone has already paid him to wait though he always tries to find another taxi for us.

Ringing the bell non-stop at midnight.  That should have meant free drinks for all, no?  Not so much.

Almost everyone had a camera.  Here’s Spyke, the lead singer from Icebox.

Yolanda about to get Silly with String:

“Don’t go back there, you don’t wanna know!”

Jephthah, lead guitarist from Kaktooz, decided to challenge me to a photo duel on the street.  Since he was packing a DSLR and I only had my Panasonic GF-1, he won every time.

The rest probably isn’t suitable for publication!

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