It was our English tour guide’s birthday and he decided he wanted to go out in Lhasa’s New Town to celebrate. Our tour group gathered together in our hotel’s lobby and we laid out a rough plan for the night: we would have a few drinks in Old Town then head to a club in New Town.

We found a small bar across the road from our hotel and sat down in the hopes of a nice cold beer. We were still learning that cold beer was basically impossible to get in Tibet. They offered us an alternative – warm beer and a glass with ice.

We had a couple of rounds of drinks then went out to get a taxi to New Town. Our tour guide knew a club, but he couldn’t quite remember the address so he gave us a street nearby to meet at. As we drove out of Old Town and into New Town I noticed that the city seemed to morph into a generic Chinese city – lit up skyscrapers and dark streets. They had preserved Old Lhasa and just built a city around it.

When we all finally arrived at the meeting place, we walked over to the club. If you’ve never been to a Chinese night club before, it is a very strange experience. When you go in you are given a table, but you are expected to spend a certain amount of money to sit at that table. When we walked in to the club they instantly gave us one of the best tables in the club.

Then we had to order drinks. Obviously we all wanted to order individually, most of us wanting a beer. They only wanted to sell us overpriced champagne or a crate of dozens of beers, however. This led into the most complicated attempt to order alcohol ever – they didn’t seem to understand why we didn’t want to buy overpriced alcohol we weren’t going to finish. Eventually they realised we weren’t going to spend stupid amounts of money and moved us to sit at the bar.

The club was typically chinese. Everyone was seated at a table where table service was provided. There was a dance floor that was full of clubber dancing to cheesy pop-dance tunes like “The Happy Birthday Song” and “Merry Christmas”. Behind the dance floor was a stage where professional dancers would come on and perform.

We were at the bar struggling to get the attention of the bartenders. We had no trouble getting the attention of people in the club however – foreigners aren’t very common in Tibetan clubs. We had now been in the club for over an hour and still hadn’t managed to get a drink.

We eventually did get their attention and the drinks started to flow. We got drunk, danced with the locals and finally stumbled into taxis and handed them our hotel’s business cards. There’s a reason I generally don’t like Chinese night clubs.