Celebration dinner

Well we finished our project yesterday and we are so happy. I will be staying another week to ensure the remaining issues are fixed. We had a formal dinner last night and it was incredible. This was followed by a celebratory night on the town. We went to a place called the boat restaurant which is a big boat on an island. We ordered a bunch of neat dishes and everyone had a little of everything.

First of all we had lobster. I've only had it once before so it was really good to have. They had it available two ways, one with soy sauce and the other with cheese and noodles. We had the cheese and noodle selection. Two lobster's came, (one for each table) and it was soooo tasty. Another dish we had was goose feet. I've never tried this before, but you eat the webbing which is really just skin and you eat the meat around the bone. Strange, and difficult with chop sticks, but it was also good. We also had crocodile, squid, oysters, and a few other things here and there. I've never had food like that, it was really really good.

We sat down and when we started eating, the waiter filled tiny glasses (1/2 ounce) with a liquor. I think it was called Maotai or something but it was a rice drink that was around 60% ABV. There were a few toasts and this stuff burned on the way down every time. Eventually things started to pick up and the gumbays began. As far as I know, Gumbay is the Chinese word for 'bottoms up'. Everyone toasted everyone else and would finish their drink. There were about 20 people so I had around 20 half-ounce shots of this stuff. Then Daniel, our project manager challenged the authority there to drink a wine-glass full of this stuff. The authority said he would if three more people from our company joined in. I was one of the ones chosen and that is where it went downhill. It really didn't burn as it was going down (I was doing it fast though) but man it did not sit easily once it was in my stomach. I managed to avoid being sick though.

By this point our dinner had ended and we were all feeling really good. We went back to the hotel to get beers from our minifridges and then seven of us took a taxi to a local nightclub called Yesterdays.