Nightlife

There isn’t a huge nightlife scene in Kabul. The bars are attached to restaurants (of which there are 8), and there’s one disco (kind of hard to get your groove on to Afghan music), so most activities take place at private compounds (that word makes it seem grander than it is .. really it is just a guesthouse with an unarmed guard on duty). In order to occupy our time, there are a number of “game nights” to choose from. Typically the hosting house provides the liquor (if there is any to be found), and participants bring the snacks and mixers (things like Pringles but they are made in Pakistan so they are called Ringles). Here is a sample of my social calendar: Monday is trivia night, Wednesday and Sunday is low buy-in Texas Hold ‘Em night, Tuesday is big buy-in poker night (I don’t go to this), and Saturday is Scrabble night. The rest of the week gets filled in with the occasional restaurant outing and plenty of DVD watching (since we are so close to China, we get newly released movies very quickly .. although you have to watch them with Chinese subtitles). The above picture was taken at one of my regular poker nights, and “buy-in” refers to how much it costs to get a seat. The big buy-in night is $100, the low buy-in night is $10 (otherwise known as piddly poker).