Where to spend New Year’s Eve if you’re not in New Zealand

The best and worst places to spend New Year's Eve. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Here are 5 of the best - and the worst - places where I’ve seen in the new year, writes Anna Sarjeant

Dublin, Ireland

You’re not going to have a bad time in a Dublin pub on New Year’s Eve. Especially if you’re with 10 of your closest friends and it’s during your pre-kid era. Every venue is bubbling with expectations for a charmingly debaucherous night; every inch of every pub decorated in an excessive amount of baubles, tinsel and fairy lights. Musicians on banjos and fiddles occupy cosy corners and belt out a few merry tunes before everyone huddles together for Auld Lang Syne at midnight. The next morning, we discover a phone is missing; the brand-new iPhone of 2017, just days old. ‘Find my Phone’ discloses it’s still in the pub and we turn up hungover at 11am to hunt for it. The place is now cold and smells of cheap bleach. We end up finding the phone in the U-bend of the women’s toilet - we collectively decide to ask no questions and venture onwards for a full Irish breakfast.

Score: 8/10 - for all-round hi-jinks and good stories

You're not going to have a bad time in Dublin on New Year's Eve. Photo / Getty Images

Moalboal, Cebu, Philippines

At 7pm we’re sitting on the seashore drinking beer, in our early 30s and a single year into a relationship that would later result in marriage and two kids. But right now, we’re happily sun-kissed and on the precipice of joyful drunkenness. The beach bar accommodates all of four people, but the barman encourages us to return later when he has his “new karaoke system” set up. Complete with DVD soundtrack. We do just that; returning hours later to fireworks on the beach, admired through hazy eyes. We ask for karaoke and our friend dutifully assists. He allows us three tracks – the sole German man sitting on a bar stool beside us quietly sighing, “oh nein, nein - dreadful”. Midway through our third belter, the barman suddenly - and aggressively - turns off the karaoke machine and while clearly miffed we’ve ruined karaoke, puts on Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits instead.

Score: 7/10 - points lost for stunting our creative melodies

Moalboal, Cebu in the Philippines. Photo / Getty Images

Cairns, Australia

The campground is full of large families, friends and throngs of children. We’re in a Wicked campervan with zero space and no respite from the boiling temperature, even though the sun has long set. We certainly don’t have enough wine to make any of this fun. It’s still three hours to midnight and every minute seems to pass extra slowly. We’re lonely without family and there’s nothing else to say to the person you’ve spent the better part of two weeks travelling Australia’s east coast with. To waste 10 minutes, we wander to the beachfront and sit on an uncomfortable bench watching Crocodile Dundee on a tiny phone. It’s still only 10.30pm. I can’t handle the torture and go to bed. We sleep through the chimes of midnight and wake the next morning to find a horrified woman standing outside our van - “If I’d known you were spending New Year’s Eve in THAT thing, I’d have invited you to come and stay in our cabin.”

Score: 2/10 - the dullest wait for midnight imaginable

Sydney, Australia

It was a strategic afternoon spent in the hostel – prizing open 2-litre bottles of fizzy pop and filling them mostly with vodka before attempting to disguise the broken seal. Pro tip: Pick coloured bottles as Coca-Cola will look suspiciously watered down. To gain a good vantage point for the famed Sydney fireworks, we leave at 4pm to score a place to sit; an eight-hour wait expected to be far more fun with our contraband. All eight friends pass security without hassle but my boyfriend at the time has his bottles eyed suspiciously before we’re both tossed to the kerb. Which is exactly where we stay with scores of other rejects, on a small grassy knoll with views only mildly hindered by city dwellings. It’s a pleasant few hours in the sunshine and then darkness, before the fireworks rage across the sky and live up to every excited expectation. By 1am we’re walking home and a man pops my giant inflatable kangaroo with his cigarette. 14 years on and I still hate him.

Score: 9/10 - top marks, minus the unnecessary kangaroo slaughter

Sydney's NYE fireworks. Photo / Twitter: @ajplus

Hanoi, Vietnam

I don’t encourage anyone to embark on a solo travel trip over New Year’s Eve – unless you like being reminded that you don’t have a single person to celebrate it with. The year I trotted off to Vietnam, I found myself on a tour made up mostly of families. By NYE I’ve had enough of being included in various activities by the parents while their teenage kids looked at me like a loser. I’m yet to discover the courage to dine alone so I’ve resigned myself to an evening in my semi-grimy hotel room with a packet of M&Ms. There’s a knock at the door and the child-free Kiwi couple on our tour ask if I’d like to spend the evening with them. The introvert in me wants to say no but my stomach, not quite fulfilled on cheap candy, prompts me to grab my bag and go. Hanoi is electric. The pavements are heaving with people and the streets are so chaotic, you can’t tell the difference between 9pm and midnight, except for the fireworks and the haze of red that follows.

Score: 7/10 - lonely but eternally grateful for a kind, Kiwi couple.

Hanoi in Vietnam. Photo / Frida Aguilar Estrada on Unsplash