Bahrain Part II : The Nightlife

Well well well, the nightlife in Bahrain is way more exciting than it is in Doha. The bands there are more capable of playing complex rock songs, and they truly make the effort to please the audience, and play the songs requested by patrons

The first night in, we partied at the many "restaurants" in the hotel we stayed. I had reviewed Hotel Ramee Baisan in TripAdvisor, and my review is uploaded here.  This hotel houses 4 lounges, namely the Indian, Russian, Chinese and the Arabian. The Indian lounge, named the Bollywood Cafe had dancing Indian girls every night. I think I was the only female patron there, and we got the front row seats. Oddly, it was fun to watch other men throwing fake-feather shawl and crowns to the girls, to dance to the medley of Bollywood tunes, ranging from rock to mellow sad romantic songs. Overall, this lounge made up for the hotel's crappy service

Then we ventured into the Russian lounge, which was a waste of time. The patrons were all Arabs, both young and old Saudis, in Bahrain for the weekend entertainment. The Russian girls were dancing really terribly, and one of them kept prompting the patron to "buy" the shawl for the dancer. The concept goes like this, if you "garland" the feather shawl to the dancer, she gets tipped. If you place a crown on her head the tip is even bigger. Then she would probably dance to a song of your choosing or dance closer to you and juggle her hardware harder for you. Anyhow I only managed to get one shot of the dancers before someone told me cameras are not allowed

Then we went to The Warbler downstairs for a dose of good English music and live band, while the live band sucked the drinks, ambiance and decor was very nice and Englishy. The floors were cobbled streets, there were literally street signs all over the place, and every single empty space on the wall was occupied with assortments of catch-phrases and words, pictures and whatnot classic stuff. I am guessing the owner probably missed UK terribly or he just has a fetish for this sort of thing. The band that played here every night, except on Sundays are named the Fire & Rain and have neither in their music. All they did was to prance around Caucasians patrons and sing with them and totally ignore our table. These stupid people couldn't even play the most common rock songs that we requested. So, they're all Rain and no Fire.

Then when my husband went for a haircut in one of the local barbershop, the guy there gave him a list of hotels that has proper bands, so we went to the Twister Club in Ramada Palace Hotel@ Gudaibiya which has a truly great band with a comedian attached, so he prances around picks on the patrons and ensures everyone has a jolly good time there. And this band played several of our requested rock songs. While some songs they didn't have, they compensated for other songs from the same singer. Which I think was a really nice gesture. Still, to my knowledge no one in Bahrain or Doha could string Bohemian Rhapsody yet. And the only bar that can is in Dubai. More on this next time

Then we went to the Zuzu Bar in The Casablanca Hotel which is like a stone's throw away from Ramada Palace. They also have a live band there and they played really good songs. The place didn't utilise its space to its optimum so the dance floor is very rectangularish, kind of horizontal. The band here played the song Satish had wanted to hear but the two other hotels we went to could not play it because they just didn't know how to. I think it was something from Thin Lizzy. One of the patron got excited and he got up to play the electric guitar (probably to impress his date too) This place looked relatively new and nicer compared to the Twister Club.

Finally, high and mighty we went to the Arabian lounge upstairs for a last round of Heineken. It was nothing great, we got front row seats as usual but I was getting bored of the whole dancing girls thing so we left

We were hungry, despite drinking the whole night, so we walked into this Filipino restaurant and I asked for fried noodles and she pointed out to an Indonesian place just a few doors away, and good thing she did because that place opened till 3am and they had-of all things possible rojak and mee goreng. The place was small and quaint and we were able to order in our native tongue. They were utterly shocked when my husband and I staggered in and he said loudly "apa khabar?!" That was really funny. So two nights in a row, after heavy drinking we ended up at this place to take-away our dinner.

Another place to note is the Hard Rock Cafe, the alcohol here was ridicolously expensive but the attendants are very attentive and they kept coming to us to ask if we needed anything else. We bought a few pairs of tee for ourselves and his relatives. Also, Hard Rock has a decent vegetarian menu of pastas, burgers and nachos