Clubbing holidays – Ayia Napa, Ibiza, Malia, Magaluf, Zante, Kavos, Kos, Sunny Beach
How I Traveled To Ayia Napa Alone With Club 18-30
This is a post by one of our Clubbing Holiday Forum members AndyLondon but it was so good we thought more people should be helped to find it so we are publishing it here on our blog.
I’ve finally had some time to write up some feedback on my ‘unusual’ trip to Ayia Napa with Club 18-30, as a thanks for the advice I got before I was going. Its long but I hope it will be useful to people in a similar situation.
Some may remember but I was 28, recently a student again with only a few weeks in August off and since returning to training my father died of cancer so really I was just in need of getting away, getting very drunk and having a laugh.
I fly Sunday and on the transfer coach I get my first taste of the attitude a lone traveler gets on an 18-30 package as a girl sitting next to me can’t understand why i’m there by my self and she becomes quite uncomfortable – geez! Thailand wouldn’t barely have any tourists if people didn’t travel alone!
Arrive at Pambos Magic and as hotels go this one is fairly sh*t. My room is just overlooking the pool where the bar plays an eclectic mix of basey-grunge for 20 hours a day. My room vibrates with the music making sleep impossible, its at that point I realise I’m gonna have to throw myself into this holiday 100% or its going to be hell…
Monday: Spend the day wandering around figuring out where everything is and lying by the pool reading. When alone a good easy book is vital, in this case Mario Puzo’s ‘The Family’.
I notice a club 18-30 poster for a trip to a silent disco, so I decide to give it a go. Its made easy by chatting to a sweet rep called Jenny. The silent disco is awesome, surreal seeing people jump up and down in unison wearing head phones in a quiet room. I find myself befriending two lads from St Albans and also chatting to a hot rep from the Scottish borders, she’s tenacious and quite expressive!
After a bit of a dance, and a bit too much to drink at the free bar I meet the girl from the coach who seems a lot more warm towards me now, I don’t know if its because she sees me havin a good-time or because she’s drunk.
Anyway we move on to Mariella bar, where things a get a bit more hazy, I end up pulling the scottish rep, but not before she tells me a pretty little english rep I’ve just met is really into me. Anyway everybody ends up in Club Ice where the Scotish rep unfortunately distances her self. I end up by the stage with the two St Albans lads trying to dance (one has just been beaten by a group of Israelis) when the pretty little English rep turns up and we pull. At this point the club turns into a foam party and while snogging her my plimsoles become so soapy and I have difficulty standing without slipping all over the place. Anyway she disappears and tells me to wait there and never comes back, so I throw myself into the foam party with all the other idiots.
Anyway I decide to cut my losses and leave with the two St Alban’s lads, but one of the two girls they’ve hooked up with inexplicably takes an immediate disliking to me and tells me thus. Quite hurt by this, I do what any man would do and get a lap dance at Moulin Rouge from a sweet Essex girl. I then end up getting quite philosophical at the hotel bar with the bar girl and several Scandinavians. I then jump in the pool in my clothes.
Tuesday: Waking up (and to the crap noise of the bar) I realise why people don’t go on clubbing holiday’s alone; the paranoia of what you did the previous night is horrible. Booze blues at its worst, its even harder for me particularly as I always remember every single thing from the night before, curse or gift you might say, but for the first time I have a few black outs. Luckily I have my book to distract me, which is getting quite saucy.
That evening I find a great Cypriot grill near the square called Limelight, the only problem is because of the heat I can barely eat the wonderful and gigantic portions. The waiter says to me, “In London you cook for the eyes, here we cook for the stomach!”
I decide to go on the evening bar crawl, we start in a sporty pub/bar opposite from the hotel where they do a contest I get put in a team with some Reading girls, who all decide to ask me individually why i’m there alone. Anyway after a quiz which has enlightened me to a whole knew array of sex positions/acts we move on to a few bars each playing ‘I Don’t Speak No Americano.’ Still feeling a bit awkward I decide to head back to the hotel, when I bump into the St Albans lads. One has just been mistaken for the DJ of Castle Club plus it’s their last night there, so we go on a crazy bar crawl getting dirt cheap drinks saying we’re the DJ’s from Castle Club, trashed we end dancing and pissing about from every bar from Linekers to Ice, often getting up on the dance podiums offending the hot dance girls. I realised that night I hadn’t had that much fun possibly years!
We end up in Club Ice again, where the 18/30 crawl has ended up, I’ve decided to sober up a bit. One of the male reps pats me on back congratulating me for the previous night, saying the pretty little English rep hasn’t kissed a guy all season, and I’m the first to have a go! Some big DJs i’ve never heard of arrive, and I start to feel a bit old. I go to the stage with the St Albans boys to get whistles that are being handed out, the guy asks if I will use the whistle and I can’t help responding “No, I want it for the irony!” He doesn’t find it very funny and I don’t get a whistle.
Anyway we end up at River Reggae afterwards where we get warned not to put our heads underwater in the pools, due the outbreak of Conjunctivitis!
Wednesday: I say goodbye to the St Albans lads, which is sad as I they were pretty awesome drinking buddies. I wished I’d swapped names with them for facebook, but I had shut down my account during my dad’s sickness and still hadn’t reopened it.
They hang around in the lobby and I went to Nissi beach, when on your own beach bars in the day and water sports aren’t that exciting so just swam and read my book (those medieval Pope’s got up to some weird weird stuff). The water was truly amazing, warm and clear. Unfortunately I left my hotel room keeps in the back pocket of my swim-shorts which immediately rusted leaving a dodgy looking brown stain at the back of my shorts.
That night not having anything to do I go out on the strip and take some photos of the nightlife, many of the PRs are quite intrigued about me, one actually saves me from being run over by rogue Israeli speeding his quad-bike through the pedestrian zone.
On my way back to the hotel i bumped into both the scottish and english reps I had pulled the other night, they were herding in the new delivery of victims. Both were a bit cold and I couldn’t help feeling a bit of a jerk.
Thursday: Get up early for a jeep ride into the mountains, turns out to be a nightmare for taking photographs as every drop off point is full of tourists, was interesting enough though. Went up Mount Olympus and discovered the gods had been replaced by British radars, also went in a monastry which apperently holds the remains of Luke, of the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John fame, the inside of the church was more glitzy than the Napa strip!That night went on the 18-30 bar crawl that included a 2 hour free bar at Aqua Club and a ticket to Castle Club. Got chatting to a few cool people, including two Manchester lads, I’d learned by now not to try and chat to girls on my own, as they would freak out as soon as they discovered I was alone, and only go up and chat to girls with other guys. We had the usual crawl of drinking games, from Titanic Bar (bit tasteless isn’t it? What next Club Chernobyl, Hindenburg Bar?) then Hollywood Bar, Mariella Bar and Rock Garden. By then we were unsurprisingly too trashed to take advantage of the free bar at Aqua, in fact it was fairly messy, lots of nudity I recall. One of the Manchester lads decided it was time to cut his losses and left while his mate and I decided to be wing men in approaching a group of Edinburgh girls.I quickly pulled with one of them, a little red head and found myself in the little lagoon pool at the back of the hotel. She then worked me hard right into the morning but I was happy to oblige, keen to try out some of those new positions/acts I learned two nights previous from the quiz. Pambos Magic beds aren’t great for shagging on though, we might as well been banging on bumper cars.
Friday: The previous night, a few people persuaded me to go on the Booze Cruise something I didn’t have much interest in. For me it was a complete waste of money, I don’t really enjoy getting pissed in the day, specially after a night of full-on drinking and f*cking, they kept shouting this is ‘a booze cruise not a snooze cruise’ which kinda made the organised fun, more like forced fun. It was really nice to go swimming off a boat though, but I could have done it privately a lot cheaper.That night went out with the two Manchester lads starting in Titanic Bar, then Minos, Bedrock, where one of the Manchester guys swallowed a vodka jelly off a girl’s tits, then to Linekers where we already screwed but they were kind enough to give us tickets to Castle Club. By the time we got to Castle I was trashed but enjoyed the Dance music floor, we went down into the Hip Hop floors but found it very aggressive, and had to talk us out of a few fights.
Ending up back at the hotel bar, I was chatting to a few people. I saw two girls from Wimbledon which were on my plane and I had kept bumping into and thought I would go over and say hi, they immediately asked why I was on my own and then proceeded to sing “Andy has no friends” at me which I should have taken in jest from these two pretty dumb girls, but I did let it upset me. I ended up having a bit of a rant to a really nice Brazillian/British girl, who was desperate to speak to another ‘adult’ as she called it.
Once again I ended up in the pool in my clothes.
However that night because of those two silicon bimbos ironically I realised something, recently I had alienated myself a little from my friends because of my Dad’s illness. Some friends can be really rubbish in difficult times, but you can’t hold it against them, we all have our weaknesses. Perhaps it was time to reopen my facebook account and get back on the phone. Many of them have grown out of trips to Napa or Ibiza, and weren’t available to come away with me this year anyway, but if you don’t make the effort I could end up going on more holidays alone when I otherwise wouldn’t need too.
Saturday: My last full day. I take a jeep trip to the North, the Turkish occupied zone, it suddenly becomes quite third world. The driver tactlessly points out to two Israeli co-travelers a harbour where the recent flotilla started that headed to the Gaza Strip with tragic results. At one of the UN buffer zones I walk down the beach to see a resort the size and scale of Benidorm completely abandoned, a ghost town. Unfortunately the soldiers at the nearby watch tower observe me so I don’t take a picture, can you believe it the best bloody thing all holiday to take a photograph off, and I can’t!
That evening I decide to go down the beach next to the harbour and have an evening swim. The water is still hot and it’s beautiful as the sun is setting. That is one of the great things about going on holiday alone, doing something strange like swimming at sunset – you would never do that if you were in a group.
My last night I meet the Manchester lads, one hasn’t stopped drinking and not gone to bed since the boat trip the day before, I find out he’s recently split from a long term girlfriend, and we kind of expect him to disappear at some point in the evening. We go to a few bars and end up in Rock Garden playing pool with the Brazilian girl and her friend. We then go to Carwash, where the music is so cheezy its just like uni again, I try to down a bottle of WKD like i could when I was an undergraduate and fail miserably. A few last drinks at the hotel bar with the Brazilian girl and the sun rises saying goodbye to my last night out in Ayia Napa.
The following day I spend the day down Nissi beach with the two Manchester lads. While waiting at the hotel one of the reps bravely tries to sell me a ticket to the Big Reunion, which I think is a step to far for a single traveler!
Well, well done if you’ve read this in full, to sum it all up, this holiday did me a world of good – I had more fun than I had in years, it was at times a bit awkward and tough but worth it. Would I recommend going on a clubbing holiday alone, perhaps not but I met a few other single travellers out there and many more people do it than you think.
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Firstly Andy, sorry to read about the loss of your Father. It’s tough and sadly life isn’t always easy.
We are sad to read your dislike to the Titanic Bar’s name, obviously, you are not aware of the number of years it’s been around (at least 7/8 years if not more).
Nor do we agree that an abandoned town is the best thing on your holiday. If it wasn’t for the invasion of July & August 1974 Ayia Napa wouldn’t exist and you and ourselves wouldn’t be writing this ironically.
On the bright side of your holiday, apart from “pulling” and making a few new friends, you got out & about and explored the Island which many others don’t do. And this is a quite detailed blog which probably means you had a good time overall.
A week is not enough to enjoy Ayia Napa to it’s full and hopefully you’ll come again, with a friend or companion, and take home a more positive view.