There were two Santa events in Guangzhou this weekend. While both were super fun, they were both very different. One was in its 9th year, while the other was throwing a Santa bash for the first time.

I joined up with both events and snapped lots of photos along the way.  First up, Friday’s Santa Crawl 2012, organized by people who work at the Australian Consulate in Guangzhou.  About 90 Santas met up at the first stop, The Paddy Field in Tianhe, before embarking on a short walk to the nearby sports centre to a couple nice private couches. We sang, danced, and drank all the while.  We then headed to Wave Bar for a quick 30 minutes of a ‘club’ environment. Santas were on stage, in the dark, and dancing to loud music. By the end of the 30 minutes, we were ready for the third location: McCawley’s. McCawley’s was well set up and prepared.  It proved to be a great venue, complete with music that everybody seemed to enjoy. All locations had free flow of drinks (selected). The crawl had plenty of sponsorship, so we indulged in San Miguel, Crown, Pure Blond, and Lucky Beer at all locations.

It proved to be great turn out. It felt a bit rushed at times, and if you’re not a big drinker, 150 RMB is a bit much for two cans of San Miguel. I really didn’t like how the locations were kept striclty secret. In my view, it doesn’t make any sense to keep a public, money making event a secret. However, if the point was to go from pub to pub, have a lot of Santa’s singing, dancing and partying, then it was a success!

(Check out Photos of the 9th Santa Pub Crawl in Nanfang Studio)

The next afternoon was SantaCon 2012. It started at 136 Sleeping Wood at 12 noon. It was a pretty good turnout for a Saturday (after a friday night of partying!), commencing with about 45 Santas. It was then a walk to some good ol’ public transportation: a public bus across town to Taojin Lu. Another juant took us to Jian She Liu Ma Lu towards Tekila, and then another random walk to the Garden Hotel for a picture with the big Christmas Tree. After that, we walked to Lucky 5 Bar where Santas hung around for a few hours. I took an afternoon break and joined again at 9pm at Hooley’s.

The group left Lucky 5, then took the metro to Zhujiang New Town, walked through the park, and then arrived at Hooley’s. There, we enjoyed the awesome sounds of Gigantic. After about an hour, we took another walk – snapping photos the whole time – and hopped on a bus to Zapata’s at Party Pier.

Overall, SantaCon was relaxed, fun, and FREE. Every bar had a special discount for those in costume. The locations and schedules were secret also – but that’s because they weren’t really planned. The organizer, Jeff, would just ask everyone if we wanted to keep walking or go to the next venue. It was being Santa for Santa’s sake. Seeing it was their first event in Guangzhou, hats off to the organizer for a relaxed and fun event. Not much drinking, not alot of prep, but there were many venues and it was memorable.

(Check out photos of SantaCon 2012 in Nanfang Studio)

There’s something for everyone here. Whether you party hard, are a night owl, or an early bird, you can still rock that Santa suit in public and not feel like a weirdo!

Missed these ones? Don’t fret, December 22nd is the date for the Official Tiger Beer Crawl. This is a big one, so get ready!