Two Decades of Curmudgeonly New Year's Eves
When your heart, mind (and feet) are blissfully in warmer climes for New Year's Eve, but your body didn't manage to escape the Northern Hemisphere…
Happy New Year's Eve! Or, if you're not into the whole brevity thing, Happy Random Day Arbitrarily Chosen to Be a Significant Demarcation of Time, Even Though Time Is Just, Like, A Social Construct, Man!
Since Christmas and New Year's are holidays in most of the world, we've spent most of the past two decade's worth of the festive season travelling, usually in random countries, and those nearer the equator if at all possible. And while the list of destinations we've chimed in the new year in over the years might look impressive on paper (or in pixels), not all New Year's Eves are created equal.
Some have been fun, some have been miserable. And on more than one occasion we've been fast asleep at midnight (including, presumably, again this year). Anyway, we'd thought it'd be fun to put together a list, accompanied by a pithy sentence or two. So that's what we did. Also hoping that all the relevant statute of limitations have expired in cases where crimes may have been committed....
2003 Seattle 🇺🇸
2004 Beirut 🇱🇧
2005 Seattle 🇺🇸
2006 Prague 🇨🇿
2007 Tirana 🇦🇱
2008 Dakar 🇸🇳
2009 Bujumbura 🇧🇮
2010 Addis Ababa 🇪🇹
2011 Ljubljana 🇸🇮
2012 Ljubljana 🇸🇮
2013 Muscat 🇴🇲
2014 Ljubljana 🇸🇮
2015 Beirut 🇱🇧
2016 Koh Phangan 🇹🇭
2017 Los Angeles 🇺🇸
2018 Doha 🇶🇦
2019 Cairo 🇪🇬
2020 Kuala Lumpur 🇲🇾
2021 Bogotá 🇨🇴
2022 Pokhara 🇳🇵
2023 Wadi Rum 🇯🇴
One of these we fell asleep before midnight, because the maps in Lonely Planet aren't drawn to scale so we ended up walking some 35km in flip flops and arriving back at our hotel late into the night exhausted.
One of these we had terrible food poisoning from hotel restaurant lasagne, which we were suspicious of because it was ready in like 2mins, but ate it anyway, because the lasagne in this country was perhaps the best we'd ever had.
One of these we were on the roof of our guesthouse because they said it was too dangerous to go out and then at midnight nothing happened at all and the next day we found out there had been a grenade attack at the central market a few days earlier so a curfew was in effect.
Two of these we were on our roof to watch the fireworks from the city's quaint little castle, only it was too foggy to see them, even from less than 1km away.
One of these we were on our roof to watch the fireworks from the city's quaint little castle, and this time we could actually see them, because, as they say, the third is indeed the charm.
One of these we were only in the country because of cancer (a friend's, not ours) and now don't remember if we actually did anything on New Year's Eve.
One of these our friends rented a 1950s bus and drove around the city stopping to party in random squares and intersections, and when we joined them around 11pm we didn't know the water bottle we got handed was actually MDMA, so drank half of it in one go, had an amazing night and then got stopped by vice police at 7am on our walk home along empty streets, but it was fine.
One of these we passed up the opportunity to go to a private party on an uninhabited island in the Nile, because we were trying to be responsible, and our reward was to have the police bang on the apartment door first thing in the morning anyway (we didn't open it).
One of these we played minigolf, then fell asleep on a very comfortable couch before midnight watching Gremlins with friends.
One of these we were relieved to arrive in the city in time to check into our hotel and get to the main square for midnight - even though it was total chaos and we spent most of the time fending off pickpockets - because our day had started getting on the wrong bus, going in the opposite direction, in a different country.
One of these we sat on plastic stools drinking beer poured from giant bottles into little glasses and eating various delectable foods sold from carts in a corner of a Tesco parking lot underneath red lanterns.
One of these we slowly drank the 200ml of vodka we'd smuggled into the country because we didn't know that they confiscated duty free alcohol at the airport and didn't want to pay exorbitant amounts for drinks at the bar in the 5-star hotel we were staying in for free.
One of these was spent wandering around trying in vain to find a hotel room after three different reservations were cancelled, almost giving up and going back to the village, before finally getting lucky and then hanging out with a very international group of trekkers on a rooftop.
One of these we started at a private party in an art gallery in a skyscraper, then later ended up getting kicked out of a limo, chased by the army, losing our glasses, waking up in a stranger's bed and walking home blind the following afternoon.
One of these we stayed on the rooftop, because it had an amazing view of the entire city, which is notoriously dangerous even when the streets aren't packed with revellers on New Year's Eve.
One of these we were technically a war refugee, and at midnight were in the city's main square, which most of the year is covered in (British) piss and vomit.
One of these we tried to go to a beach only accessible by boat but ended up at the worst place on the island, where at least one person died when the the new year sign fireworks didn't go to plan, but we didn't know this at the time and ended up euphorically walking home in the early afternoon the next day nevertheless.
One of these we went to a house party, but have zero recollection of the night, except that we were in a white Honda.
One of these we wished we had a bird's eye view of the main square so we could see what it looked like when people scattered every time someone randomly threw a giant firecracker into the crowd for reasons that were never quite clear to us.
Note: These are listed in something of alphabetical order, excluding the initial ‘One of these (we were)'…