A Long Night

Not particularly long in terms of time, just in terms of hassle and how I felt at the end.

The day was largely unremarkable, like many that have come and gone. I had some breakfast, got my internet fix, hung about for most of the rest of the time. One strange thing did happen. While I was sitting with some of my new-found German friends, one of their Australian friends (a cool guy named Tim) was sort of assaulted by a scary-looking very-drunk fellow. This was while we were hanging out on the pool level of the hostel. It seemed like the drunk fellow was really mad at Tim for some reason, but I don't think we really ever found out what it was had him so incensed. He grabbed Tim's hand and slammed it down a couple of times, but Tim said later he was mostly hitting his own hand. I got up to try to deflect some of the anger to me, and it worked, kind of. But he also got more angry and hit me open-handed in the throat. Eventually the hostel staff diffused the situation, and I think some of his friends took him to his room to sleep it off.

That night held its own brand of excitement. It was the Swiss girls' last night, they were flying to Cairns in the Morning, so we all went out for drinks and dancing. The night started at Shenannigans (an Irish pub) and there were a bunch of people there that were connected through various tours. Things started to go south when security or the bar manager or someone reacted badly to one of our group dancing near/on some benches. He got kicked out for the night. A couple of people tried to round up everyone to go somewhere else (we eventually decided on the Vic), but it was like herding cats. Once we finally got everyone (or at least, most of the people) out of the pub and to the Vic, the doorman denied entry to two of the girls on the grounds that they were "too drunk". After alternating sitting around, pleading with the doorman, and generally being frustrated, we decided to go back to the Irish bar. One of the other guys (I didn't catch his name) switched shirts with Terry (the Irishman that got ejected from the pub before) in a vain attempt to get him back in. It didn't work. The night ended with our group seriously split. I think some of the people stayed at the Vic, a couple of people left with Terry to go somewhere else, and a few people stayed at Shenannigans. I wasn't feeling the dancing too much that night, so I went home early, probably around 1 AM, and went to bed soon after. I hung out with Tim for a little while, but kept falling asleep.