H Club: A Night Inside A Chinese Superclub in Makati
We were told the club can get wild, like during Chinese New Year.
(SPOT.ph) After I graduated high school in ‘06, I flew to Beijing with my mom. There, I met up with Muchen—a friend I made in a basketball forum—and his 6’4” friend Kevin. They brought me to VICS, a popular club in the city, and we ordered three bottles of Chivas Regal—one for each of us. The rest of the night was a blur. Cops busted in, stopped the music, and frisked people for drugs. And then Kevin said we should take a drive.
“We are f***ing drunk, Kevin,” I managed to say.
He replied: “I am the best drunk driver in Beijing.” Which convinced me that Kevin was the best drunk driver in Beijing.
My last memory was rolling the window down in the world’s largest police state and shouting: “I love Beijing! I f***ing love Beijing!”
I woke up on a black couch at 4 a.m. to eight missed calls from my mother, so I quickly checked if my kidneys were intact before hailing a cab to the hotel. In the car, I tell the driver in my toddler-level Chinese: “My father. Angry. I am dead.”
The next day, Muchen calls me up. When I pick up, he is overjoyed. “Gian, you’re alive!” he said. “We thought you died! I told Kevin: ‘Poor Gian, he graduated, went to Beijing and died!”
This is my long way of saying it’s been 18 years since I stepped into a Chinese club—and I still cannot take the taste of Chivas Regal.
Welcome to H Club, a POGO nightclub in Makati
Since Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) mushroomed in Manila, tiny patches of our city began resembling what I remember of Beijing. Restaurants, convenience stores, and yes, night spots. I’d always been curious about the POGO world—but also happy to stop short of knowing why one POGO hub allegedly had a torture chamber in its facility.
The typical POGO employee will likely stay mum about their circumstances. So our only windows into their lives, barring a Senate inquiry, are the occasional meal in a restaurant without an English menu, and yes—a night in a POGO club.
H Club’s Facebook page presents quite a sexy sight—sexy DJs, sexy smoke, sexy dancers, sexy shirtless men, and sexy discounts like three bottles of cognac for P188,888—all in a superclub developed in what a local friend calls the “multiple stab wound district” of Makati. I called up my friend Charleton, who’s done work with POGOs before, to ask what goes on in these places. And he said, well, there are probably karaoke rooms, a dance floor, and Chinese EDM. I tell him: We better go.
What awaits the H Club visitor
The interiors of H Club strikes you first of all. There are life-size silver Boba Fetts near the entrance, an Iron Man armor, and digital dice rollers. Their private rooms have LEDs as wallpaper—and you are likely to find a shark or jellyfish swimming behind you as you look up your karaoke favorite. The dance floor is wide, has generous seating, fancy lighting, and industrial decor. With the right song, it’s easy to imagine John Wick busting in and murdering a few mafiosos as the crowd dances on.
The (mostly Filipino) waitstaff will bow as you enter. They are an army. Their waiter to table ratio is 1:1—perhaps why it cost Charleton and I P2,800.00 for our table, which came with a three-layered rack of fruits, six bottles of water, some cashews and sung-song peanuts. The waiter will hand you a tablet with their menu. There is a tab for beer, from which we each had a Kronenbourg 1664 Blanc (P280.00). There is a tab for “props”—whatever that is. And another tab with silhouettes of dancers that says “click to dance”—but we didn’t bother to find out more.
The service is excellent. The waitstaff observed our glasses of beer carefully—dropping extra ice as needed, without us prompting them. They could actually be overzealous with the ice, but are nevertheless friendly and informative. The club opens at 10 and is “lit” by midnight, they say. The clientele is mostly Chinese, but they cater to an international crowd, and—as they have made evident—Filipinos are quite welcome. The Chinese manager came by to check on us, chat a little bit, and have a little toast with us. When we needed a drink, we got it immediately. No waiting with uncertainty at the mercy of a bartender, which too often reminds me of the void that is the Mercury Drug queue.
The club has a good selection of drinks, with common hard liquors ranging from P4,000 to P8,000 per bottle. The food menu is likewise extensive and decently priced—with Mainland Chinese fare one would typically find in a POGO restaurant. For those who enjoy a little luxury in their lives, H Club Makati offers the Hennessy Richard (P688,800) or the Remy Martin Louis XIII (P368,000). One might wish to pair this with fireworks or bottle sparklers (Php8,888) from their props menu.
As the night progressed, the tables filled up with the Chinese clientele. They kept mostly to their tables, but it was quite nice to see our visitors let loose around each other. There were groups of Filipinas, too—in their best clothes—waiting to be talked to. T-Pain’s voice blasted through the venue, then Ne-Yo, and Dua Lipa. The Chinese EDM, to our grave disappointment, never came—though we were at least treated to an EDM version of the Game of Thrones theme.
We were told the club can get wild—especially on peak nights like Chinese New Year. They import DJs and hire costumed sexy dancers, as evidenced by their Facebook page. Prime tables can go for almost P200,000 minimum consumption. But that weeknight, my old friend Charleton and I sat down in a superclub and caught up after a few months. Our exclusive waiter could hear everything we say, and would swoop in and drop ice cubes into our glasses. The bathroom was nice and vomit-free. Ordering drinks was far easier compared to the Mercury Drug system of other clubs but I wasn’t about to get wasted. Though I could imagine Charleton and myself driving around Makati’s “multiple stab wound district” with our windows down, shouting “I love H Club! I f***ing love H Club!”