Day 2: Bachelor party at Chocolate

**I'm actually back in India now but wanted to finish writing up before everything escapes my mind**

I didn't think Day 2 would extend sooo long. So I got back to the hotel and slept. George called me I think at 10.40pm and I didn't know what was happening, where I was etc. when the phone rang. I remember someone from the hotel staff came to my room to connect the call but I can't remember.

After 15min, I headed out to Chocolate - an out and out expat hangout in Beijing. It was a Thursday night and I couldn't believe the crowd nor the number of entertainers - quite a lot. There was some belly dancing, table dancing, lots of vodka, cross dressers, rock band, opera-ish singers, standup comedians -- amazingly a lot of things for a weekday night. Most of the women seemed to have come from Russia. I met several expats - someone who worked in private equity space, an architect from Boston, an Australian/ South African entrepreneur who started a scientific papers translation service, someone who worked at the embassy and an artist from California (G's best man). It was a fun night that stretched to the very next morning.

While we waited for G to exit what he had taken in (somewhere near 2nd ring road), I noticed an African-English guy from Welsh who happened to join our group (we had a big van). Something suddenly flashed for him and he went, "What am I doing here, what am I doing here? I don't know any of you..." It was funny.

I basically realized that Beijing offered a lot of expats (several of them have been living for over 5 years) freedom at an unbelievably low cost. Such an environment is important for any major city to attract expats. As one of them said, he could hang out every night and that would be okay. At some points, you can't really tell where you are. Like Chocolate could be in Southeast Michigan...only the waiters were Chinese.

We got back to the hotel at 5am...I was hungry and I couldn't sleep. My day continued.