Mark Andrew, Consultant
My big night out started with an early dinner and drinks at Cochrane's in Central. A relatively new place, it's got a great location and decent bar-type food. What's even better is that it serves beer from its own microbrewery - too rare in Hong Kong.
We were out early as we were heading to a gig in Kowloon Bay that night at Hitec. It's a bit of a mission to get there, although I love live music and am happy to travel wherever necessary to hear it.
The band, called the Swamp, had come from Beijing, playing a mixture of rock and psychedelia. There's just not enough live music in Hong Kong, so it's great to hear decent original stuff being played by people who are genuinely into it.
The show finished about 10.30pm and we were still up for more live music. I'd heard of a bar in Tsim Sha Tsui called Ned Kelly's Last Stand, so we decided to check it out. It was dark and welcoming and the house jazz band were terrific.
We talked and listened for about 90 minutes before realising that the MTR had long since stopped running. We cabbed it back to the island and over to Central. We decided to try out the Volar club after hearing so much about it, but it was so busy that we decided not to join the queue.