Bar room blitz - Pokhara 30th May 2006

Most of the morning was spent pottering around the lake and I found a sandwich shop that does the most amazing bacon (real bacon) and salad rolls with mustard. Absolute heaven, shame I’m leaving town again tomorrow.

Later on, I met up with Wolf and Cheddup at the Blues Bar, actually slight correction, on my way to the Blues Bar I bumped into Raju and two of his friends and he insisted that I came to 7 Eleven with them. 7 Eleven isn’t a franchise of the convenience store, it’s an upstairs bar. With dancers. There was a good mixed crowd of people in there and we took a seat down near the front left of stage. The dancing was a mixture of traditional dancing and Irish pole dancing. That is to say that there were no poles on stage and the women, although scantily clad, remained clothed. Some of the dancers were wearing very mini skits, but underneath they had big granny knickers on, a bit bizarre and certainly wouldn’t happen in Bangkok. As we were sitting there, Raju starts smiling over at me and then asks me if I want to be with the woman (his friend) who is sitting beside me. I asked him what he meant (just to clarify) and he told me that he trusts me and that I can be with his friend if I want. No money! I told him that I had to meet up with Dessie later to sort out our trip tomorrow (bit of a white lie) and that I was meeting him in the Blues Bar. So we ended up going across the road to Cheddups place and we could actually chat there as the music wasn’t so loud.

Raju repeated his kind offer, all whilst the woman was sitting beside me. I got talking to her and she asked me if she could go on the trip to the Last Resort with me, and was a bit upset when I told her that it had already happened. She then blurts out her mobile phone number and tells me to give her a ring in the morning to arrange something. I told her that there is no way that I’m going to remember her number without writing it down and she told me that of course I will. I told her that I’d get it off her again later, but will probably give her a ring next week as I’m going away for a couple of days. Then she started trying to feed me peanuts – do I really look like an elephant?

Whilst all this was happening, Cheddup was getting abuse from some Nepali guy sitting at the bar. Over the course of an hour Cheddup was putting up with this abuse and occasionally arguing with the guy. It turns out that his mother is the freeholder of the bar and Cheddup pays rent to her. This guy stirs up shit with Cheddup every so often and tells him that it’s his bar and that he’s going to get rid if Cheddup when he takes over. It started to get a bit heated and they were arguing in English (so most of the people in the bar could follow what was happening) and Wolf and I had to go over and gently separate them on a couple of occasions. Any other bar in the world and they guy would have been thrown out hours ago and barred, but Cheddup is one of the nicest guys you could meet and is so laid back that he took it from this guy. Until he flipped that is.

I was keeping half an eye on the bar as I was talking and next think I notice is Cheddup doing a flying kick across the bar into the guys chest. They both go down on the ground and start fighting. Loads of people try to jump in to stop it, but Wolf and I are trying to get everyone away so that they can finish the fight. The air needed clearing and this was the best way of doing it. But everyone tried to interfere and a brawl was breaking out. One of the guys mates squared up to me, I told him to calm down, that I wasn’t fighting his mate as well, but he wasn’t listening and tried to hit me. I grabbed his arm and shoved him away and then grabbed the guy fighting Cheddup before his mate got back. I got the guy into a headlock and tried to get him towards the main door and out of the bar. He was pulling Cheddups hair (dreadlocks) and wouldn’t let go and there were people trying to pull Cheddup off him, so the whole scrum made their slowly to the door. I tripped on someones leg and brought the scrum down on top of me, I still had the guy in a headlock and he’s screaming at me to let him go. No chance. Wolf comes over and pulls me up and shouts at the guy to stop pulling Cheddups hair (girly fighting!) but he won’t. Wolf starts punching the guy on the arm, really belting him, but he still won’t let go. We eventually manage to free Cheddups hair from his grasp and we shove the guy out the door. Cheddup is steaming at this stage and we have to keep him from chasing after him. It wasn’t really a fight, more of a shove and sprawl, but it did liven up the evening and got me away from Raju’s friend for a while!

About five minutes after the brawl ended the police turn up at the door and try to take both the guys down to the police station. Cheddup won’t go and tells the cops that it’s his bar and this guy was causing hassle so they threw him out (sort of true-ish). The police call the guys mother (he’s in his 30’s), his mother goes mad with him and drags him off in a taxi. Entertaining night.