Chill out with Hobbits.
Last week I decided that the Melbourne winter wasn’t cold enough, so I went to a bar where it was -10 degrees inside and drinks were served in glasses made of ice. The Chill On Ice Lounge & Ski Lodge isn’t up in the mountains, though. It’s smack in the heart of Melbourne. I was there for an ASTW (Australian Society of Travel Writers) lunch (although we didn’t eat our actual lunch in the bar – we ate that next door in the ‘Ski Lodge’). Before you are escorted into the ice bar you are decked out in thick gloves and a big fur-lined plastic poncho. The poncho is plastic because the cocktail glasses are made of ice and are as slippery as hell – because I imagine many people would drop their drinks. We were only in the -10 degrees for 10 minutes, so I did feel a bit sorry for the barman who, by the look of his chattering teeth, must have been in there for quite a while.
I’ve always wanted to visit an ‘ice bar’ after seeing the Ice Hotel (in Sweden) in a TV travel show. I do love a good novelty themed bar and have visited a few in my travels. Here are some of my favourites I have been to:
The Hobbit House – Manila, Philippines
I’m sure this very un-PC bar would be closed down in Australia. The entire staff in this bar are – now what is the politically correct term – vertically challenged (I think that’s right). A local took me to the bar, but didn’t tell me about the staff, so when our waiter popped his head up over the table and asked us if we wanted to order a drink I almost fell off my chair.
The Clinic – Singapore
Sadly, I think this kooky hospital-themed Clinic Bar is now closed, but it was quite fun sitting in a gold-plated wheelchair then ordering an IV bag of booze. The IV cocktails included “Sex on the Drip” and “Blood Transfusion”. The shots come in syringes or test tubes. The Croft Institute Bar in Melbourne also serves up drinks in test tubes and looks like a doctor’s surgery – they just don’t have hospital beds for chairs and staff dressed as nurses and doctors!
The Daly Creek Hotel – Northern Territory, Australia
This bar doesn’t necessarily have a theme, but it does have an entire bar covered in bras (donated by female patrons after a few drinks I imagine) and an entire wall full of thongs.
I did also go to a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland that had coffins for tables. And there were like black candles on the wall. I think. I say I think, because boy was I drunk. Not sure what the theme was, but I do remember dancing on the coffin.
