"'Anyone seen a g-string?'

Now, there are times in your life when you are suddenly struck with the thought "what the fuck am I doing here?" and the answer comes back clear as a bell, "buggered if I know son, get on with it!".

For me just such a moment occurred last saturday evening, when I found myself in a half blissed drunken state with a stripper's tongue half way down my throat. Not that unusual a thing to find happening to you in Wanchai (Hong Kong girlie bar district, well reknowned for ripping-off servicemen of all nations with equal facility for many many years), but I was in a fucking Indian Restaurant for God's sake...

Now this was what I'd call a properly organised stag party. An entire restaurant was booked, and we started at about 3pm in a bar called Carnegies (poor man's Hard Rock Cafe, with the emphasis placed purely on the booze), slammed down about three pints in preparation (on top of the couple I'd had with the China mob, as usual, at lunch), then across for food.

We stayed in the restaurant for about four hours, had a couple of strippers lap-dancing for all they were worth for about 40 minutes of it (with the obligatory humiliation of the grooom to be, of course. At least they left him his underpants). Which was followed by the meal (well, its one way of working up an appetite). Quote of the day has to be from the girls minder, who came wandering back out of the kitchen after the performance and said "Any of you lads seen a g-string" (We found it under a table).

Now that is a sight. Twenty drunken blokes crawling round a restaurant floor looking for a bit of discarded stripper apparel...

Things got a little nasty when the bill came. Restaurant tried to rip us off mightily, and were told in no uncertain terms where to shove it. I think the thought of twenty pissed-up construction engineers relocating the contents of his restaurant into Henessey Road via the front window leant a little weight to our side of the haggle!

After this things get a little fuzzy.
I remmember the bar with the very bored looking bar dancers in it.
I remmember the packed disco full of phillipinos.
I remmember Carnegies again.
I remmember drinking whiskey at the grooms flat.
I remmember stumbling up the hill towards home.
I do not remmember where my watch went, or tripping over just about everything between the flat door and my bedroom.
So, all in all, a fairly good night.

Not a classic "stag do" though. No arrests, nobody "trapped", the groom didn't get handcuffed to anything, and no street furniture collected.

Now I've just got to survive the wedding tommorrow.

- Steve