On the razz

It's the first night of the holiday so I need to find a suitable den of ill repute.

The Reggae Reggae bar fits the bill nicely. It's full of backpackers and has a faux Chinese cocktail menu. Inside, the walls are lined with posters of Bob Marley. There are hand-painted poems extolling the virtues of ganja, punctuated by governmental warnings that the penalty for trafficking drugs of any kind in Malaysia is DEATH.

Rashly, I order a Blue Lagoon, followed by a Black Russian. Both are accompanied by maraschino cherries. The Black Lagoon forming in my stomach convinces me I can play pool, and I do so, badly, with a Canadian gapper and his diving instructor chum. Disappointingly, despite hailing from the Channel Islands, he has only 10 fingers. I convince them I am hustling them and will get much, much better in about 10 minutes.

I stay until the bar becomes overrun with freshly graduated international school students. The girls are 18 but look 35, like exhausted prostitutes, falling out of butt-skimming lycra dresses. The boys look 14, in stonewash denim with untamed bushes of hair. Every so often there is a murderous shriek, accompanied by the sound of glass breaking. I pity them. They are missing out on a key stage of their development by not sitting home alone, depressed in their rooms, listening to Radiohead and Hating Everyone, like normal 18-yr-olds. The youth of today.