Manny V In The Water: Bintang Brutality

Introduced by an Indo Vet and incognito party animal, Angel Cruz, the Padang Padang Warung Crawl has been added to the many other fun things to do on the Indo Experience. What the heck is Padang Padang and who the heck is a warung? Padang Padang is one of my favorite beaches on Bali. It helps that it’s home to one of the best left hand reef breaks in Indo. But the white sand beach is absolutely amazing. A warung is the Balinese word for restaurant. And at all the Padang Padang warungs, Bintangs are served ice cold. Now, if you add this all together it’s just like saying, pub crawl on the beach.

Lawrence is about the same size and girth as me. Devin and Mario are about the same size. So it would seem that the drinking battle was set. Here’s how it was supposed to go down…

There are six warungs on Padang Padang beach. But this day, we would only drink at five beers. One of the warungs was closed. At each warung, we all cheers to start the chung-a-thon and the first one to finish their small 12oz Bintang beer gets to call out a genre of music. The last person to finish has to sing a song from that genre. And after each warung, we all had our t-shirts signed by a worker from that warung. Plus, you get one star for making it through each warung. And at the end of the game, we are treated to a fish feast to help soak up all the alcohol.

After the first warung, it was clear as day. Lawrence was the drinking machine. Mario was right there with him holding his own. Devin did a great job but you could tell he went all out to not be last. I took my time to sus out the competition. I came in last here. Yes, I had to sing a pop song. With my crappy memory of song words, I went with Thriller and threw in some dance moves to throw off the fact that I didn’t know all the words.

The second warung was the one that defined the rest of the game. Lawrence drank his beer faster than the one before! Mario was right there with him again. And I just made sure I didn’t lose to Devin again. Devin lost. Devin sang a rap song. And we all know that there’s really only a few white guys that can sing rap… Devin isn’t one of ‘em. Hahaha.

The third warung was quick. Almost an instant replay of the previous warung. But at the forth warung, Nyoman Warung, we met up with a group that was ready to leave the beach. Turns out there were a couple girls in the group that were from South Carolina. And they wanted in. No one had an issue with it. “I’ve very competitive”, said Kate (one of the SC girls). It was on. Lawrence finally had some competition. Cheers… it was on. I had to take my time and watch them two go at it. Lawrence did what he has been doing from the start. Kate was chugging but half of her beer was draining down the side of her mouth and onto her shirt! She slammed the empty green bottle down and claimed victory. The crowd of 15 or so that gathered cheered for her. I didn’t want to say anything but I know for a fact, Lawrence out chugged her hands down. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, Kate’s wet shirt… yeah, it was white and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. So the boys got a free wet t-shirt contest too!

Wayan’s Warung was the last stop and this is where we put it all on the line with large 20 oz Bintangs. It was evident we’ve lost Devin to the Bintang’s wrath. There were a group of big, and I mean massive, ju jitsu wrestlers at the warung. Devin was at the point where he wanted to test his skills and wrestler one of ‘em. But lucky for him he just got a photo with two of the guys, Paulo and Hamilton.

I still think to this point that Devin has no clue that Lawrence switched Bintangs with him at this warung. Lawrence drank about three quarters of his own beer before swapping out Devin’s almost full beer. And when Devin finished it before me, he claimed it for five to ten minutes afterwards calling me benchong (Balinese for tranny). We all were laughing and having a great time. And… we didn’t piss anyone off.

Then the grilled mahi mahi came out and it was feasting time! Mario rallied up a few French girls to join us. All good. It was nice for the boys to have some females to share a meal with. As usual there was tons of left overs. I did the rounds of serving up all the beach vendors and warung workers with rice and fish.

We ended the crawl with a human pyramid and Mailei was the one to get on top of the sculpture.

The 2011 Padang Padang Warung Crawl went down in prime fashion. Mailei and I wished we had Barbie on the beach to rally up more people to participate. She’s an animal! It would’ve been cool to have her there at every warung crawl. Barbie save your money and come back!

The next day, was travel day. One hour flight, two hour drive was in store for the boys. Mario wasn’t in top shape to travel this day. He spent most of this morning hugging the porcelain. Mario, Devin and I were fine. But this day was going to be brutal for Mario.

Bali Belly attacks some of our crew. Stay tuned with an update from the Aman Gati at Lakey’s.