Ice Ice Baby

This city. It’s so weird. So, okay, last night we went to this restaurant around the corner from where we live, called The Binjiang One. (‘Binjiang’ being the word for, like, ‘riverside’, or riviera, that sort of thing.) We’d never been there before but I’d seen an ad for it ages ago that said they have a “vodka snow bar”. Basically it’s a room that’s kept freezing cold, and they have something like 200 different kinds of vodka, and you go there and they give you a big parka to put on and then you can go into this freezing room and drink shots of vodka. It’s super-cheesy and super-brilliant.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “What do you mean you have lived there for nearly six months and until now you had never gone to the Snow Bar to drink shots of vodka?” Well honestly you might be surprised how very few opportunities parents of toddlers get to go out and knock back vodka shots. Even though quite possibly as a group we may in fact be the ones who most need to.

Anyway last night we left Miss M with our awesome ayi Xiao Gun and we went out to eat with a bunch of folks G works with (and can I just say, all-you-can-eat teppanyaki is one of the most fantastic concepts ever in the history of humanity), and afterwards we managed to convince our friends S and M to come with us to check out the Snow Bar.

Bizarrely, although it was Friday and about 10:30 pm, there was nobody else there. I mean there was the staff, and it was like they were all just standing there waiting for us to turn up. So they gave us our parkas and tah dah, there we were, with the snow bar and bartender all to ourselves. I probably should have been paying more attention to what brands we were trying, but I didn’t think of it at the time. (Mostly I was just thinking stuff like “oo! I want that one!”) I know we all started with one that was flavoured with elderflower, then we all started trying different stuff. I had one that was mandarin blossom, and one that was pomegranate, and one that was ‘mint mojito’. Marnie had a rose one which was a very pretty pale pink but I didn’t like it as it reminded me too much of the bathroom spray my grandmother used to use in her condo in Florida when I was a kid. G and S tried a wheat vodka they said was very smooth.

Well I don’t really have much more to say about this, other than that is was fun and now I regret not going there in, like, August, when it was so freakin’ hot here I thought I might spontaneously combust. So without further ado, please enjoy these photos of four people in big coats getting a bit tipsy.