Expensive lessons learnt by a newbie in his first dozen bar punts
Hey bros,
I had taken a break from bar mongering for about two months, but I've recently resumed it again. For fellow newbies, I'll offer lessons I've learnt so far and make some offensive generalizations, because really, if a generalization isn't offensive, it's not that helpful, right? (jk...)
1. This is an expensive hobby. If you're in HK just for a trip or come here every few months for business, it might be okay, but if you live here and you want this to be your main Friday/Saturday night going-out activity, you'll need a pretty big wallet or you'll just be sipping on gin & tonic and eyeing these cute girls without being able to do anything, which is not cool. (It'd be like going to Vegas or Macao or something with no money to spend, which must be the worst thing.) So don't get into this too lightly. It's damn good, it's addictive, and it's expensive.
2. I remember the first time I went to one (Neptune II). I was just blown away by the girl/guy ratio (I was there on a good night, and it was like 3 to 1), and I got this idea that there's just an endless supply of hot women at these bars. This is not true. Soon enough, you'll get adjusted to this scene, and you'll actually look for someone who's really your cup of tea, and you'll realize that even though there might be 100+ pretty attractive women there, the ones that really get you interested are just a handful.
3. Despite beauty being in the eye of the beholder, sense of physical beauty is sufficiently widely shared that if there's a stunner, she'll be snatched up extremely quickly. Last night, I saw an unbelievable beauty at Escape. Like, honestly, I've lived in several countries, travelled to many, and met women from all sorts of backgrounds and places, and this girl is probably the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen in my life. And she was never alone, and I couldn't get any time to talk to her. There was another gorgeous girl, possibly from Columbia, same story. This relates back to point 2: if you see someone you like, don't mess around, you gotta go for it. They'll be snatched up very quickly.
4. From my limited experience, Vietnamese girls seem to be very business-focused. I mean, truth to be told, fair enough, right? But still, you see some gorgeous girl, you wanna get her a drink and start chatting a bit and find out what she's like, but no, bam, she'll ask if you came alone, and if you wanna leave with her, and if you indicate that you might be but you wanna hang a little first, then she'll say that she needs to go and work. Now, my few encounters might have been unlucky and misrepresentative, or I might be some very unappealing guy (I don't think so, but who knows right?) But once, I went back to my place with one such girl, and the service was subpar, very "get in, get you off, get your money, then get out" attitude.
5. Be careful approaching a girl hanging out with her girl friends. You might be pressured into entertaining the whole crowd and end up bleeding money. I don't know what the right solution is to this, and the more experienced bros should let us know. But obviously, it probably means that she's nice and friendlier and easier to get along with than one who's just all by herself, but you might offer to get her a drink, and she'll smile and be like "Yes, thank you", and then as she's ordering, she'd be like, "Oh, can you get a drink for my friend here too? She's my best buddy here.", and I don't know, I suppose I'm just too young to be stern about such things, but I end up being like, sure. This isn't just a matter of few extra bucks, because the friend will
likely be someone who doesn't have much business herself, so she'll hang around you, not giving you time to talk to your girl by yourselves, and keep just asking for drinks, food, etc., and it's a lot of hassle. I think certain bars lend themselves to this practice more so than others, e.g. Traffik is usually not very crowded and it has a lot of seating space and it's smaller so the girls seem to know each other there, so this seems to happen more.
6. Not everyone there is looking to just get as much business as they can. Now, I know some more experienced bros might think that as a newbie, I don't really understand and I'm too idealistic or naive or whatever, but I'm pretty sure about this. For example, I once struck up a long conversation with this girl, and I wasn't looking for anyone to go to a room with, and we were just talking for the whole night, and she told me that she's primarily there to just get guys to buy her drinks, and she doesn't really go home with anybody (I mean, if you offered unusually a lot money, I'm sure she can be convinced). Another girl told me that she has a semi-regular job during the day, so she can't come out on most days, and she had to leave relatively early because she had to work the following morning. This other time, I met this girl, hit it off pretty well, started talking, she told me that she's not a prostitue or a whore, she just likes to party and dance and drink and listen to music and meet people and hang out. I was thinking, yeah, right, I mean, she might like all of these things but if it was just for that, she could be going to LKF or something, not hang out at Escape or whatever. Anyway, she was too drunk so she left but she gave me her number and asked to hang out some other time. Following weekend, we make contact by phone again, and I ask her if she wants to come over to my place, and she basically seems a little bit offended, and asks me if I don't think it's a bit too much to ask her to come back to my place when we've barely met and hardly know each other! She said she was back at her place, and is happy to come out again to hang out for an hour or something, but not to go home. And honestly, I think I was being as respectful and polite as all of us are expected to be. Perhaps after we build up some more familiarity and rapport, it could happen, but just to let you know guys, this just proves the point that we should really be nice and well-mannered and it doesn't make us above them or anything like that just because of the context of the location.
This post is already long enough, so that should do it for now. Just my two cents for other bros just starting out. | |
