Black and White Ball - New Year Celebrations Cancelled (kind of)

I'm not usually a big one for New Year Celebrations, although counting back the last few years that could be the wrong perception:

2008 - celebrated with crew on my favourite layover in Hong Kong with dinner,then party in the city streets culminating in an expat Irish pub.

2007 - Casino Royale James Bond themed house party in London (House parties rock in the UK especially in the dead of winter!)

2006 - Edinburgh, Scotland with my local resident cousins, 1 day after landing from my 3 week holiday in Mexico. Celebrated at their world famous Hogmanay Street party. We failed to get the news flash to bring our own drinks as none were to be found for sale unless you had secured a pub to camp out in from midday....we still had fun though.

So I thought this year would be a quiet one. Wrong. PPP surprised me with a ticket to a Black & White Ball in Bahrain a few weeks ago. What surprised us the most however, was on arrival to the party, we discovered the King had ordered the cancellation of all New Years events in the country "in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza following days of massive Israeli attacks". After a few text messages to various friends around the Gulf region I discovered we were not the only countries effected.

In the end, the 700 something black and white partygoers were not left out in the cold, however all live music and dancers scheduled for the evening were cancelled, and although a more sombre tone lingered on the night, we still managed to enjoy the delicious buffet (PPP and I amazingly found it easy to steer clear of anything non vegan) and dance our little hearts out til the early hours of the morn. Saw some amazing dresses and met some lovely new people. And for once, didn't wake up with too much of a hangover. Bring on 2009!