The route today was one of busy highways and meandering hairpins with mixture of gravel, tar and broken concrete, through paddy fields and pineapple plantations with the odd coconut trees lining the sometime narrowing back roads, the competition element today started with a regularity section at the top of a mountain, the local traffic has hindered some of the competitors and their times show this, but this is rallying and for people to share roads to go rallying we have to expect that sometimes it doesn't go completely our way! Owen and I again had a go on the regularity and arrived 1 second early to the finish control, I say it's not good enough but I am improving with time! We proceeded on the route taking time to try some arty filming with Owen hanging out of the side with his ipad whilst closely following Anton in the Bentley, Owen had to give up as he was slowly turning browner and browner with the dust sticking to his face and hair whilst filling up his eyes and nostrils, he proved this by blowing his nose and showing me the contents of the tissue!
We arrived at the lunch halt where the Cottons were running the time control and we had a spot to eat at a lovely rural looking cafe where the food was excellent but the coffee tasted like mud! People were working in the fields nearby but stopped to let me take a quick photo of them.
We sat with the doctors and discussed high brow topics such as who's going to get the most drunk tonight and which competitors we fancied the most, mine was Dana Hadrecky, Owens was Paul Merryweather, Dr Ollie fancied Dr Matt, and Dr Matt fancied himself! 
The Bentley of the two posh lads was finally running right after two weeks of tinkering and they are really loving the car now, isn't it great that it took an old metro ignition lead to be fitted to make it run properly! The Chevy Impala lost a bolt on the suspension in the afternoon but Skippy and Tony were on the case getting it all put back together ready to drive up to the hotel. Once we arrived at the Shangri la in the middle of town we were ushered to the basement where another Bentley was waiting with a noise from the rear brakes, these hadn't been adjusted since before the event and a quick twiddle of the nobs it was back to proper brakes, and so we were ready for the night before the day off, we are now realising that these nights are pretty much all messy especially for the management who have a bit of a blow out as they don't have work the following day, we need to watch what we do as we have to tend to the cars early tomorrow morning.
We had a pre dinner drinking session in Nikki's room where she had filled the bath up with beer and wine bottles, laid on some nibbles so we could have a chat before we headed down to an official dinner with the competitors, there were a few tables laid out just for the Peking to Paris 2016 competitors and Nikki asked if we didn't mind sitting with them as we had been on the event previously, I sat with the Hadrecky husband and wife team who have entered and had a ball chatting about preparation, both them and the car, spirits where very high and the food was excellent and the wine plenty, I was the only one on our table drinking white wine so I couldn't finish the second bottle on the table, needing to leave room for more alcohol when we left to go out on the town.
The taxis where summoned as about 22 of us gathered in front of the lobby, it very soon got out of hand as Chris Elkins, Owen and Tony thought it a great idea to climb on the roof of the cab as there was a luggage rack that obviously looked too inviting to ignore! Once these morons were ordered off the roof and ushered into the second taxi we sped off to the emptiest, noisiest club in this town, it was rubbish and after listening to rubbish music and necking a bottle of gin between us all we wandered down the road and ended up in a bar called Loco Elvis where karaoke was in full swing, many drinks later the Kirkhams decided to get up and sing as it was there 35th anniversary, not wishing to be shy the doctors went up to sing 'you've lost that loving feeling'! A great rendition was enjoyed by all but quickly overshadowed when Owen, Kitch, Tony and I leapt on stage to perform a one off surprise but excellent performance of 'hey Jude', the crowd starred starry eyed and amazed at the beautiful sounding quartet that shone before them, we left the stage to flowers being thrown at us and a huge cheer and round of applause as we soaked up the sheer admiration of our fellow staff and competitors drinking before us, we were awesome!
It didn't take long before we were ushered out of the pub as they were closing now, the night was still young so the pub staff pointed us in the direction of a club called Spicey, a prostitute ridden hole with crap beer and worse whisky. It didn't take long for the midget prostitutes madam to thrust a young girl at me giving me a price list and what that price included, I wasn't sure this girl was a girl to be honest but the whole situation was not a pleasant one for me and although it was funny to start with we were all feeling a bit uncomfortable to be honest so exit strategies were being formulated, it was getting so bad towards the end of the night and I was starting to feel sorry for this girl as she had only been doing this for a couple of weeks so I did the best thing I think I could've done, I paid this girl the going rate and told her to go home, it wasn't very much money in our terms but guess it's a lot to them, the problem with paying her to basically leave me alone was that all the other prostitutes then stormed me to give them money to not go with them so I legged it, straight into a tut tut and left at breakneck speed with one of these girls still trying to climb in next to me, I yelled at the driver to go as quickly as possible shaking of the girls as we roared towards the Shangri La, phew that was an experience I do not wish to have again! I texted Emma as soon as I got back to the room which made me feel a lot better and we had a bit of a laugh about my evening escapology!
Need to sleep now as proper pissed and tired!
No comments:
Post a Comment