Night People (Part 1) - Feng Tao

The post with the title above would have to be placed under PG18 at least, or maybe PG15. While the post will be a total "no big deal" to the night people, I treat this purely as a documentation of what I have experienced, viewed, studied and 'try-to-understand' during a period when I was among the night people. So, people under 18, please stop reading this now.

I plan to have a Part 1 - Feng Tao, Part 2 - Coyote Ugly and Part 3 - Common Pubs; just as an expression from a extreme night people to that of the most common ones. I will not talk about night races, rempit, hookers/transvestites waiting by the roadside and drunkards walking about and shouting in the streets. These 'activities' I have seen, but did not get myself absorbed to understand why the human body and soul act that way.

Back in 2002 - 2003, I had the opportunity to go out at night quite a bit, especially since I had a colleague friend who seem to 'adopt' a "need to release my sorrow" habit which he carried about three months or so.

Feng Tao, which literally means shaking head (I don't know in which dialect) refers to the darkest (in terms of light and feeling) of discos I have ever been in. It starts about 2am all the way to the early morning at 7am and no one would know it's daylight. My colleague, while in normal pubs have made some friends with a more hardcore drinker and someone who's crazy about going feng tao. Here's my experience....

My colleague picked me up from home and brought me over to (I forgot the location) where I notice it's a pub cum snooker centre which he plays often. Then his friend suggested to check a feng tao place. My colleague wasn't so sure about this but would like to take a look, and therefore, knowing (hopefully) that I can think straight, I followed suit just to take a look. We got into his friend's car, and we went off towards... crap.. I forgot the location. Anyway, it's a shophouse, packed with cars on the outside but very quiet.

Before we went in, his friends decided to 'smoke'. This smoking was done using a small mineral water bottle, with the 'vegetable' placed into the bottle and lit and the bottle capped. A small hole was bored at the side of the bottle where a stay is placed in and they just puff away. We never tried. That's the first 'step' to getting high.

About 15 minutes later, near 1:30am we were led into to the door, once inside we had to walk to a totally dark maze like area with only 'arrow' lights on the floor, and music started to get louder. Once totally inside, at least three bouncers are on standby, trance music totally deafening, and at least 90% of the people are just nodding their head to the beat of the bass. WTF!

Three jugs of beers given, my colleague took one glass, and he said taste awful. Then the second 'step' offered, a pill! Somewhat 'respectably' these friends of his respect free will, they just offer but it's up to you to take or not. The whole place was nearly dark, with disco lights, and packed, and on the way to the common toilet, there's already a couple doing 'project' on the floor! Back to the edge of what seems to be where these zombies are, I was fascinated at these 90% of people who are just moving, nodding, clapping and 'touching' and being totally oblivious to what the heck is around. Serious zombies.

When the DJ shouts something, they all go "yeaaa!!!". Heck, he could have said "Do you all wanna die?" or "Do you all wanna go home now?" Within 20 minutes we left the place outselves and took a cab back to his car. I revisited another feng tao place within two weeks, this time at Puchong IOI Mall roof top, same ole'.

Like being a drunk, or getting extremely high on smoking or even drugs, my only answer to why these people chose such an activity,... is for release. To release oneself from the world's care, no worries, no responsibility, no feeling. It's like they want to be dead for a while, just to 'rest' the soul. Any-hoot, I don't judge them, but to me this lifestyle is an extreme lifestyle which just cannot suit a lot of people. To just go home totally stoned driven by one person who's not drunk, and waking up the next day not knowing what happened the night before is somewhat of a "reset" button to these people. At least that's what they explained to me.

One thing for sure, in every group, there is nearly at least one other person who will be sober the entire time. His/her 'job' is to make sure they go home safe. Funny team, but hey, they at least made sure they don't 'die' for good.