Liquid Lobotomy

Civilization at last! Hotels with electricity and flush dunnies; restaurants with English menus (meals only double the price as those on the Chinese menus!); even a place in town with a hot shower. Sure, Latse has only one street, and you can walk from end to end in under ten minutes. However, compared to the mud brick shanty towns we've travelled through it is a bustling metropolis.

There's even a public bus that will take us on to Shigatse, though we decide to spend the night in Latse to recooperate. The laundry is the only luxury we can't indulge in. The bus will leave too early and our clothes will not dry in time.

After showering (for a good half hour) I put my dirty clothes back on. Now that I'm clean I realise just how rotten my gear actually is. There's been no chance to wash clothes since leaving Kashgar, some two weeks earlier. Mud, sweat, petrol, and bits of past meals combine to form a solid coating on my jeans - and that's just the exterior.

In the evening we head out to one of the small, cheap restaurants for a meal. Dai has gone walkabout, so it's just myself, Glover, Ben and Riva. The meal is primitive: some meat with rice and vegetables. It's not instant noodles however, and we devour it with pleasure.

Having reached civilization once again, we do what any self respecting westeners would do in our situation. We decide to get drunk. Ben and Riva have been living in China for six months, working as English teachers and they introduce us to a special Chinese brew, called baijiu. It's a potent form of rice whiskey, and a full bottle is purchased for less than four dollars. The Chinese call this a "liquid lobotomy".

It's barely six in the evening when we crack the bottle and pour out shots to go with our meal. The smell alone is enough to put us over the legal driving limit. I down the first shot and it occurs to me that I've not been properly drunk since leaving Australia. As the harsh liquid strips my throat bare, I have a sudden premonition that this night is going to end very, very badly.

We polish off the bottle with our meal. The owner of the restaurant comes over to see what all the commotion is about and we quickly pour her a shot as well. We over-rule her protests with a friendly barrage of "Gampae" (Chinese for "cheers", or rather for "skul"). She knocks it back with a grimace and then wisely retreats to the safety of her kitchen.

As everyone knows, one bottle of baijui is never enough. We pick up a fresh one at the local corner store. Having finished our meal however, we now have nowhere to drink. Already well and truly pissed, we make the sensible decision to head to the local park.

It's early evening, the sun still lingers in the sky, and children are playing in the park. We had planned to keep a low profile in Latse as the local Police are rumoured to be hard on foreigners and our permits are not valid here. Either we forget this plan, or we decide that being drunk and disorderly in the local playground counts as keeping a low profile - I honestly don't remember.

We pull up a bench in a nice little pagoda and pour out shots into paper cups (where these came from, I have no idea). As we throw these down, kids begin to gather and surround us. Apparently there is nothing more exciting to a Tibetan kid than a group of westerners getting sloshed in the public park. They line up in front of us, laughing and making jokes among themselves. We respond accordingly: we cheers them and keep drinking.

Thankfully the sun has set when we finish the bottle. A few adults have gathered now to watch the performance. It's definitely time to move on. We lurch to our feet and stagger down the main street. Our getaway is not perfect however: the gaggle of kids, some twenty of them, follow us. The kids yell and scream at each other, running and playing around us. Repeatedly, they call out "hello" and "how are you?", the few English phrases they know. The crowd swells in size as we make our way down the street.

The kids pull at our shirts, some begging, some just playing. One of us, I don't remember who, starts high-fiving the kids. Before we know it ever kid in town is trying to slap our hands. The kids aren't quite sure of the purpose of this game. They assume the point is to slap your opponent as hard as you can. Before long we are fighting off a crowd of excited kids trying to slap the shit out of us.

Glover and myself make it to the edge of the crowd and flee. Ben and Riva are lost in the swell of children, though in our drunken state we fail to notice. Assuming they are following us we set off in search of whatever this town has to offer in the way of a drinking hole.

We come across what looks to be a bar, based on the pictures out front. Unfortunately it's locked tight. There's little else in sight. We have the inspirational idea to ask two of the local men walking by for directions. It's only half way through the conversation that we remember that we don't speak Chinese. We resort to charades and pigeon English.

"Where is Party Party, Drinky Drinky, Disco Disco?". We make skuling motions and bust a few dance moves to hammer home the point. They look at us blankly. That is until Glover starts girating his pelvis and swings his hand above his head like a cowboy with a laso. I stop halfway through my dance move to look at him, "What the hell is that?". This however is the breakthrough and the two men start gibbering at us and lead us to a venue.

We invite them up to drink with us, but for some reason they politely refuse. It's at this point that Glover realises that Ben and Riva are no longer with us and he decides to go looking for them. I'm still convinced that they are just behind us and fail to notice that they, and now Glover, have dissapeared. I walk upstairs and into the club.
It's a karaoke bar. I'm greeted with an over-friendly "halloo" by a gaggle of hookers. They clear a table for me, and I go to order a round of beers but stop, finally realising that I'm on my own. I look around the club, the only other patrons are a group of army boys, happily surrounded by their own pack of prostitutes.

I order a beer and sit back while the hookers at my table attempt to make small talk. It's the smallest of talk, since they don't speak English and I don't speak Chinese. A few of them give up on me and head over to the army boys. One particulary persistent Nepalese girl keeps on at me, and I just nod drunkenly.

After some twenty minutes Glover arrives with Ben and Riva in tow. The hookers back off a little but loiter nearby on the off chance that we are looking for a group deal. We order a round of beers and settle into the comfy lounge chairs.

It's a dingy, smokey place, with poor lighting and tacky, loud music. Exactly the sort of place we were looking for. The ladies bring us over a list of songs available for karaoke. There are literally thousands of them, and at least half of them are English. The army boys are working their way through the list. There are four of them and they take turns abusing the microphone. The songs are Chinese and I'm not sure if it is the music or their singing that is more terrible.

We knock back a few more beers, enjoying the cultural sights and sounds. One of the army lads, a bald, chubby Chinese guy, comes over for a chat. He offers us all cigarettes and Glover and I accept, temporarily forgeting that we don't smoke. We sit and drink and smoke with our new friend.

We decide to treat these lucky people to a little western music. After much debate we decide on Hotel California as our Karaoke selection (which clearly shows how much our judgement was off that night). We write down the number and hand it to the girl in charge of the karoake machine. At the same time Ben and Glover decide they need to piss, and they dissapear.

Of course, the very next song to come up is our selection. Riva and I take center stage, with a microphone each. It is dismal, truly aweful. Neither of us can hold a tune, and being absolutely sloshed helps not at all. We bellow the slow words into the microphone, out of time with each other and the music. The army boys cheer us on however, though I suspect this has less to do with our singing and more to do with Riva's dancing (she's half Shri Lanken and a slim, attractive girl).

As we come into the final verse, Glover and Ben burst through the door, bellowing out the words. The four of us bring the song to it's horrid, deafening climax. It sounds like a cow being slaughtered. In truth we are yelling, not singing. As the final notes die away, there is a polite clapping from the audience and the microphones are quickly and firmly taken from us.

We take our seats and resume our drinking. Things are getting messy. We have drunk two bottles of potent rice whiskey and too many beers to count. We are on our last legs when I get generous and buy the army boys a round of beers. They return the favour and buy us several rounds and cheers us every two minutes.

The rest of the night is, at best, a blur. The details have been pieced together as a collective effort (in fact Riva still can't remember singing Hotel California). At some ungodly hour, Glover and I stumble out into the hallway to find Ben hugging a bucket and spewing his guts up. The club is connected to a hotel and Riva appears from one of the bedrooms where she has been watching TV with a Chinese family.

It's time to go home. I pick up Ben and half drag him out into the street. Riva and Glover lead the way. We stumble down the middle of the road, singing Hotel California. Eventually we find our hotel. Ben sits outside our room, not yet ready for bed. Glover decides to join him for a sympathy spew, and the two of them spend the next while taking turns throwing up.

We all finally somehow make it into our respective beds and pass out. Sometime in the night I wake up, still drunk and very confused. I stand up in the middle of the room and try to get my bearings. It's pitch black and I'm totally confused. Where am I? Is this the back of a truck? I'm sure of only one thing: I need to piss.

I stumble over to a wall, still half asleep and maybe thinking that I am outside I decide it's as good a place as any to take a piss. Some small, sane part of my brain convinces me to check the area before taking any action and I reach out to feel the space in front of me. Dai, who I was just about to piss on, wakes from his sleep with start as my hands grope his face. I realise where I am, and find the door outside where I relieve myself without hitting any sleeping asians in the cross fire.

The sun comes up the next morning to reveal the chaos. Ben has a half full bucket next to his bed. Glover is a tangled mess amongst his sheets. Only Riva seems to have survived the night unscathed and is tucked away in her bed.

I realise something is sticking into my back, and I pull out the lonely planet from under me. It's wet and stinks of rice whiskey. I wonder if we emptied the bottle over it or something. Then I notice, in a nice little pile on one side of my bed, my dinner from the night before. Apparently I managed a little up-chuck myself, covering our travel guide, my bed and the sleeve of my shirt.

With groans of pain we stumble out of bed. We have only a few minutes to make the bus. Quickly we jam our gear into our bags. Riva has lost her jumper, but there's no time to look for it, and we wouldn't know where to start. We don't even know where the bus stop is, and shame faced we ask reception. They laugh at us and one says, "you last night too much drink". We can't deny it. There's probably no one in this town who didn't witness some part of the debacle from the night before.

Surprisingly, despite having trashed their hotel and surely woken up most of the guest, the staff seem sympathetic towards us. The poor westeners got a little drunk. One of them even walks us down to the bus stop. We manage to buy some water and a few steamed buns before we are herded onto the bus.

Latse dissapears behind us as the bus jostles down the dirt road. It's a long, painful five hour ride to Shigaste, the next town. We talk little, holding our heads in our hands and praying for unconciousness. A few hours out of Latse it occurs to me that we escaped the town without coming foul of the hard and angry police rumoured to be working there. Lucky we kept a low profile.