Top 5: NYEs

So many people bemoan New Year's Eve, and carry on about it being just another night. But I actually really love it - the chance to start afresh, the chance to say good riddance to a bad year, with the hope of a new one, or to toast a good year as we all move to biggest and better things in the next. Which is why I like to have good plan for NYE - no plans are lame.

The best NYE will probably always be our little trip to New Orleans in 1999/2000, to see the Millennium tick over. A wild, fun fun night along Bourbon Street, with Michelle, Donna, Bronwyn, and two others from Michelle's au pairs in Nashville group. This was part of my 3 month trip over to Nashville to visit, on a working holiday exchange, and we all stayed in this gorgeous empty French Colonial house, with a little pool out the back. Going from very cold Nashville, to mild New Orleans for this amazing weekend was also part of the treat. The drinks, the beads, and the mischief 6 foreign girls can get up to....

The very next year, I made my second trip to New York City, to see the ball drop in Times Square. A really full on year to visit New York. I stayed with Ruth, and managed to catch up with Talia and Breno too on this trip. Ruth and I froze as we waited for the countdown and the iconic ball movement.

Coming home from the UK, and spending NYE at Pyramid Rock Festival with my three sisters, and bunch of mates, was a special one. Dirty, drunky, camping, hot, but such fun!

Another cold NYE was spent in Helsinki, with Jenny and Katie. This was part of our Xmas in Sweden trip, and the start of Katie visiting me in the middle of my time away.

Rounding out at 5 would have to be the NYE spent at our house in Phnom Penh. A group of us that stayed in the city for the night gathered at my big house, with marble downstairs as our dancefloor, and the front yard held our long table for drinks, drinking games, and silliness. A hot one, but a great night. I remember we actually did the countdown at a bar, of which I cannot remember the name now, and that's about as long as I lasted. Too much gin, it turned out! Ha!

NYE is meant to be fun! And large!