Party Bus 07 299 Ns - article by Whimsical Wire Articles

While on a mid-semester break while studying in New Zealand, I was shown the wonder of the party bus. I hadn’t heard of this sort of thing before, and at the time it was a lifesaver. I was actually planning on catching a city-to-city bus out of town that evening, but when I showed up at the bus station with all of my gear it was empty. “I’m here to catch the bus,” I told the woman working at the desk. “To where?” she inquired. As it turned out, the bus I was supposed to catch left five minutes before I arrived, even though I thought I was early. Further investigation revealed that my watch had lagged and was twenty minutes too slow; I had only arrived fifteen minutes early.

Heartbroken, I tried to make travel arrangements to get me out of town but regardless of how I traveled I was going to have to stay in the city an extra day. I booked myself onto the bus leaving the following morning and debated my options. I didn’t want to go back to the lousy hostel I stayed in the night before, so I called up a friend I had in town. After telling her my story she rushed to pick me up, then whisked me off to the liquor store. It was her cousin’s 21st birthday and they had hired out a party bus.

Much more raucous than it’s cousins in America, the kiwi party bus consisted of a bus loaded with a bunch of teenagers (the drinking age is 18) and twenty-somethings who travel in the bus from pub to pub, hitting the out of the way pubs that most of them have never been to before. Though kiwi laws may change, at the present there is no open bottle law in New Zealand, so as long as the driver isn’t drinking passengers can carry as much alcohol on board as they want. The booze onboard, combined with dropping into all of the pubs, usually makes for some pretty drunk passengers. I can only imagine what the scene must be like for the people who aren’t on the bus who happen to be at the bar; a quiet night nursing a beer turns into a pub packed with people dancing and carrying on. The party bus proved to be a great time, and though I was a bit hungover when I made it to the city-to-city bus in the morning, it was definitely worth the good time, especially since the same thing could never be pulled off in the United States.

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