How To Go Clubbing Abroad Without Being a Dickhead

This article was originally published on THUMP UK.

One of the most important parts about going holiday or worse, traveling, is going on a load of really questionable nights out in clubs you wouldn't piss on back home. Like it or not you're going to find yourself in an ultraviolet air-conditioned room, paying 20p for a beer, chaining fags with a bloke from Australia while "Alors En Danse" thuds in the background. The air outside is thick with heat, your hair is a frayed mix of sand and hairspray or wax, and you and your best mates are on the other side of the world and as such on top of it.

But oh no. You've decided to be a dickhead. You've decided, just because you're in Ibiza/Thailand/Croatia/Germany/Budapest/Vietnam/Belgium/Australia/France/Scotland you've left all your self-respect in the same pile as those socks you forgot, and now you're trying to do the worm on the patio of a smoking area. The alcohol, the heat, and all those topless torsos are swimming around the fishbowl that is your head. If you're not careful you'll end up making the sort of life choices that will pop back into your head during that primetime 2AM slot every time you can't sleep. For the next 20 years.

To be clear, this doesn't mean you shouldn't make stupid life choices. We learn from them and they also provide 98% of our pub chat. That said, there is a way to be reckless, footloose and fancy-free, without being a total berk.

Here's how.

Weird isn't it, how everyone here is 22 years old except for that one bloke who looks like a really haggard, tanned Alan Shearer. Weird also that he's the only person with a bum-bag. Weird also that he has a walkie-talkie concealed quite obviously on his belt line, under his T Shirt. Weird that he is currently cuffing your mate. Weird, that.

Here's the thing, just because you went snorkelling earlier today—and just because you've spent the past six weeks snorting lines of whey protein perfecting your, admittedly spot on, abs—doesn't mean the locals or anyone else in this club wants to see you stretched over the bar ordering vodka cokes in a pair of Speedos. It's the same logic that means you reflexively go everywhere barefoot and eat four pizzas a day, and yes we get it, it's hot, but that said this is a nightclub. If someone squeezes past you to get to the toilets and you look down to see they've got nothing on but a pair of Hawaiian board shorts, you won't thank them for it. Going taps aff is one thing, those are for the flume mate. And you don't have pockets. And I can see you picking the netting out of your arse crack.

Nobody knows exactly why, but as soon as you've left the country, as soon as a hot sun is beating down on you, as soon as you sip the first gargantuanly sized beer, rolling a cigarette becomes a completely incongruous act. No, you want straights. Lovely, thick, strangely way nicer than they are at home, a fifth of the price they are at home straights.

He doesn't want a rendition of "Will Grigg's On Fire". He just wants you to pay for your drinks and leave.

Just having a laugh. Just a cheeky laugh. Just a harmless, cheeky laugh. Just shouting "por favour senor" at a German bouncer for a big old cheeky completely misguided, mildly xenophobic laugh. There's a reason they don't want tourists in Berghain.

Fuck it. The DJ of this bizarre bar turned broom-cupboard sized club has put "Wonderwall" on for a reason. He saw your bucket hats when you came in. Enjoy yourselves. Everyone thinks English people are drunk football fans with bad teeth, why disappoint them? American? Don't hesitate to wear a backwards baseball cap and request whatever EDM track with a folk-music sample is currently the most Shazamed song of the decade. German? Behave yourself and dress well. At least that way people know who to let inside when you're queued up!

Chances are, unless you're in a cluster of major cities, the nightlife scene may be little more than restaurants that realised they'd make more from selling mojitos by the bucket-load than they would calzones. The likelihood is they won't have the latest L.I.E.S. release, but then again, when did you last hear someone mix "We No Speak Americano" into "S Club Party"…on Youtube?

The worm is the worst thing anyone can ever possibly do. It's genuinely up there with homicide and saying "that's just your opinion" in a conversation that is clearly about different opinions on a subject. That said, a percentage of people out there on the earth's face feel the need to do the worm, so if you've got to do it, do it now. While you're in another country and only surrounded by a few people you know. Hopefully nobody will film it, you'll flap about on the floor for a couple of seconds, your body writhing like a dog stuck in a sleeping bag, and then you'll get up, dust yourself off, revelling in the shame that confirms you will never do that ever, ever again. Get it out of your system now before you end up trying it at your sister's wedding.

Do you piss everywhere at home? Do you? Do you stroll into your house, thank your mum for the fish fingers and chips she's just put on the table, tell her how your day was, and then start pissing everywhere? Do you piss all over the bus stops at home? Do you piss on your mates? Do you? Do you go to your mates houses and piss all over them? Do you piss yourself? Do you regularly piss yourself at home? No. I didn't think so. Don't do it here then, thank you. If it's good enough for your home it should be good enough for this Italian nightclub.

Definitely the worst thing I've ever done. Seriously. I don't know what came over me. I was embarrassed we hadn't been let in. The bouncer gave me this funny look. I just wanted to show them what I was made of, so I picked up this big plant pot—and I mean big, it came up to my torso—and upended it all over the entrance of this club. It spilled out everywhere: sand, fag butts and specks of litter. It was awful, the stench, the dirt. So I ran, we all ran, me and my three mates, tearing through the French night while the bouncer's feet slapped the street behind us, in hot pursuit. I've never run that fast in my entire life, and now I think about it, I've never felt so alive. Some exhausted bloke yelling at me in French, the warm air flushing past my ears, sea-salt in my hair and the rest of my life ahead of me. Second thoughts, definitely upend a massive plant pot full of fag butts if you get a chance. Was a laugh.

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