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Monday, July 16, 2012
Lan Kwai Fong is Lan Kwai FUN!
Posted By Desiree Kane on Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 11:03 AM
Lan Kwai Fong (蘭桂坊 )in Central Hong Kong is nuts! Known for being the entertainment (read: party) district, it certainly lives up to its name. And let me tell you, ladies night is bezerk. Holy shit.
Let's go back a couple of paces first, though. Lan Kwai Fong is primarily filled with foreigners. I noticed this when we sat down to enjoy smoking some apple and mint shisha (something I learned to love while I was in Doha!) and somewhat reasonably priced drinks. (Things aren't as cheap here as many people told me they are when I mentioned this trip, btw.)
"We just stay inside, watch movies, play drinking games with cards at someone's house," said Mookie, our Hong Kong native guide. "It's not really in our culture to go out to clubs all the time. We only really go, like tonight, if one of our out-of-town friends wants to go."
The fact that everyone is an out-of-towner makes it incredibly fun, though. In our group we had people from Algeria, mainland China, California, Palestine, Bhutan and Peru. I'm here in Hong Kong as part of the GEILI fellowship program, aimed at empowering and connecting nonprofit influencers in the social entrepreneurship realm as well as to organize TEDxLionRock, so 37 countries are represented across the 80 fellows and TEDx organizers. It seemed like every group in Lan Kwai Fong was equally as randomly international, not just ours. Fun times indeed!
Entrance to most clubs here is around $400 HK dollars, which is roughly $50 USD, firstly. What makes it so special on ladies night is that the admittance fee is waived and, get this, all vodka (or whatever the liquor of the day is) drinks are FREE. You read correctly: open bars for all ladies all night. As one can imagine, this also means ladies are all trashed all night.
Even the transsexuals and cross dressers who identify as female are free, which pretty much completed my night. We don't get cross mingling of transgendered individuals in the clubs as openly and as casually in the states. We could learn a thing or two: Their presence is so much fun!
My personal favorite part was the transgendered woman who took her top off on the pole in the club and the fact that there was a pole on a bar in the first place. It's definitely much freer here in some regards. It wasn't even that late, and there were boobs. It was refreshing, actually. The woman was not ashamed, not called a slut nor gossiped about. More importantly, no one groped her inappropriately — it was all good! It's hot as shit here (seriously) and, honestly, not that I would do the same thing, but after dancing and drinking, I bet it felt great to let the ladies out for some air.
Next stop is Mong Kok Market for a visit to the massage parlor (heh) and a visit to the traditional Chinese medicine store to oogle at a bunch of unknown, crazy looking things in jars!
Bonus video if you like bugs!:
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