Journey to the End of the Night The Citylife Pub Crawl Challenge

 |  April 30, 2009


Citylife has created a fun board game for Chiang Mai’s party people. We hope that you and your friends try it out and have a great time.

Citylife took Chiang Mai by storm last night: rolling dice, chucking down drinks, traversing the luminous streets and piss stained back alleys until the wee hours, sacrificing our sobriety and livers in the name of the job. The editorial team takes itself seriously and we felt that it was only right and proper to test our board game, ‘The Citylife Pub Crawl Challenge’ before unleashing it upon Chiang Mai.

First we shook a one, Darling Wine Pub for, believe it or not, a glass of wine . . . only to realise it is closed on Mondays. Didn’t think about that when devising the game. Note to readers: check on opening times and days before heading to venue. So we shook again, a six, Monkey Club. 7.30 we sat down for cocktails in the newly renovated lounge. ‘If you’re up, It’s Monkey Club’, said their latest marketing gimmick, and we were up, but unfortunately fate had us fettered and after only one cocktail we were soon off to the Glass Onion. If you’ve never been to this dimly lit cavern of groove and glamour, you should, it’s quite an eye opener and it stays open ’till the early hours. However, the die was cast and off we headed to sing karaoke at 12 Huay Kaew. Highlight of that had to be a Bee Gees rendition that thrilled both the crowd and the karaokees. To the tune of 100 discordant Pipers we sang our hearts out and were actually sad to leave the place that had unearthed such astounding talent . . . OK, truth? It is a little known fact that editors, in fact, can not – and should not – sing.

Citylife editor, quite incredibly (and we suspect the dice may have been loaded), shook the dice which landed us at the UN Irish Pub . . . where her husband was playing host to a table of sambuca aficionados. At this point we were slightly giddy and unsteady on our feet, the ‘one drink’ rule in each place had been abrogated in favour of punishing our brain cells more effectively – research, we kept reminding ourselves. Then it was off to the Cocktail Van. Sitting down drinking outstanding mojitos we regaled each other with – ostensibly – embarrassing sex stories, not because we had landed on a gate, but because we were all disposed to show our knackers to strangers . . . like you do. Collectively we had used plastic bags for prophylactics, got busy with two people at the same time and had a penchant for girls with really big feet.

Cocktail Van wouldn’t be Cocktail Van without a fight, and so it was the duty of a pissed Finnish – probably mentally ill – man who thought he was Indian to try and start one. With a handshake reminiscent of a vice he harangued us to play cards at his room, wanted to follow us to the next place and finally looked despondent and mad. We thankfully shook the dice (and the Fin) and landed on ‘Choose a Place’, so it was back to Glass Onion for late drinks, although once there the owner was locking up (Fair enough, dawn was only a couple of hours away). Pissed, we went our own ways, and our driver Somchai was allowed to go home: Songkran might claim more lives than the war against terrorism, but drink driving alone in Chiang Mai is more virulent than AIDS, cancer and madness.

In Thailand few stories have happy endings, and many that do cost you 500 baht. But listen to this, after getting home one of the players heard a knock at the door, it was a tuk tuk driver who had returned 30 mins later to tell him he had mistakenly been given a 1000 baht note instead of 100. Nice. The End.