To recap, Thursday night in the UAE is Friday night in the West. The end of the work week.

And when we got word from a newsroom colleague that the detachment of Marines at the U.S. Embassy here in Abu Dhabi were hosting a Cinco de Mayo party … well, as Americans and Californians, don’t we pretty much have to go to that?

(Even though May 5 actually is Saturday.)

It was an interesting experience on several levels.

The U.S. Embassy is essentially a really big bunker, rising about six stories, in the middle of a sprawling grounds in the “embassy area” of the city.

I’ve been there twice in the past few months, and you need a reservation (it was an invitation-only event) to get in the first door, and then you go through the mag-and-bag area … and even if you get past that you are still on the outside of the inner parts of the embassy.

For example, getting a passport issue resolved requires an appointment, and after you have been magged-and-bagged, you advance to a DMV-style lobby, looking through thick (bullet-proof?) glass, at the embassy worker on the other side. The only contact area: About a half-inch slot at the bottom of the window.

So, tonight, we were arriving for a party, and the first thing we saw, when we got inside the mag-and-bag security shed … were four expressionless (and perhaps Filipino) civilian employees/security people running the equipment. And a sour-faced embassy official slouched in a chair, wearing a suit, and staring at us. (We arrived with a third American, a young woman from New York, who also works at The National.)

Luckily, a solitary Marine was checking off the arriving guests, and I believe he said his name was Leo, and he was a cheerful little guy, a mood hammered home by the enormous and ridiculous red-green-white sombrero he was wearing, and by the green shirt he had on that had “Lt. Dan” printed above the breast pocket. (As in the Gary Sinise character in the movie Forrest Gump.)

“I’m not a lieutenant and my name isn’t Dan,” the kid said with a smile.

Through the mag-and-bag, minus one camera (no photos allowed anywhere in the embassy area), hands up for a “wanding,” even after successfully walking through the magnetometer.

Finally, out the back end of the north security shed (the embassy has at least one more, on the south side of the complex), and then two more civilian employees/security guards picked us up and pointed us into the heart of the compound.

After about 70 yards of confusing turns while walking past buildings without windows … we could hear music. We rounded a corner, and there we were at the Marine House.

A handful of people were sitting on a patio, and two guys were behind a bar serving beer. Inside the door to the building we had just passed was a Marine dancing insanely well with a local woman, and a second Marine manning the second bar — where mixed drinks were sold.

Having not been to a Marine House before (and all U.S. embassies have Marine detachments), I wasn’t sure what to expect, but my idea was … food, but not drink.

Had it backwards. This is a nominally “dry” country, but the Marines had a wide variety of alcohol but nothing to eat aside from a few corn chips and some popcorn. They were serving 7-8 types of beer outside, and the mixed drinks inside, in what must be the canteen for the enlisted men, where the music was cranked up to “painful” on the dial.

(It felt a little like a frat party, now that I think of it.)

We got there at 9, had a margarita with a lot of tequila (a heavy pour but, then, we were charged about $11 each — about standard in Abu Dhabi), and later a Corona beer with lime wedge (for about $5.50).

When we bought the beers, we had a chance to talk to the guys behind the bar in the relative quiet of the patio. They were in civilian clothes, and the older guy was a sergeant and the younger was, I think, a corporal.

They told us that Marines apply for embassy duty, and that it lasts for three years, and that it formerly involved three tours of one year each, but now it’s two of 18 months. The younger guy, whose accent said “Alabama” or somewhere nearby, had previously been in Dar es Salaam (in Tanzania).

I told them my son is in the Marines. They asked his rank. I said “lieutenant,” and maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed to stiffen a little. (“Officer,” I assume.) They said the embassy battalion has no lieutenants. A colonel and a captain, but no lieutenants. They were emphatic about this. As if it should be obvious. Or perhaps that they liked it that way.

Everyone below the rank of sergeant in the embassy battalion must be single, the younger guy said. And I imagine this is a Department of Defense way of mitigating the expense. The sergeant (about 30; career military, I assume), did have his family in Abu Dhabi.

I told them about my sightings of U.S. military guys at a quasi-Mexican restaurant in downtown Abu Dhabi, and they said it had to be the Air Force guys from the obscure base out in the desert south of the capital. I suppose the giveaway was when I said I saw “six or seven” young guys with The Haircut, and it turns out the Marine contingent at the U.S. Embassy here is barely that big. En toto.

They apparently have some freedom to move around the area, when they are off duty. One of our colleagues, who has lived all over the world, said she once dated, for more than a year, a Marine sergeant in Nepal. So the Marines are allowed out. Obviously.

And sometimes, they just stage social events and more than a few young women come to see them. As was the case last night. The crowd was at least 50 percent Western women — and remember, men outnumber women about 2-to-1 in this country.

Apparently, the Marines here like to throw parties. They have several per year, and they charge for drinks because they use the events as fundraisers for the annual Marine Ball, they told us, and the Marine Ball seems to be a very big deal wherever Marines are found.

The area where we were sitting, outside, on a hot night, is a sort of recreation and exercise area. In the past, we were told, they have had luaus and barbecued food, but on this occasion … no food. So, by 10, one of us (hint: not me) was about to get crabby, and we headed out just as it was getting crowded.

The Marines, turns out, are sometimes hard to decipher. The younger guy was talking about how he was “on the deck”, which I knew meant he was out and about the embassy. The “deck” being Marine-speak for the floor/ground, going back to their history on ships. And military time always requires translation. So, the event began “at 19-hundred-30 hours” and no one was allowed in after “23-hundred hours”.

As we left, two young women, presumably the last let inside, were coming in through the security area.

On our way out, we were able to glance into some of the living areas of the Marines, and we saw a pool table, a foosball table, a bookshelf jammed with DVDs … and a very large and well-equipped kitchen. The outdoors area included a ping-pong table as well as a heavy bag and weight-lifting equipment.

How late the event went, I wouldn’t know, but it did seem to be just getting cranked up as we left.

I had looked for the Marines on my previous trip to the embassy, and didn’t see them. I wasn’t deep enough inside the perimeter.

Now I have seen them, and it’s nice to know that someone at the embassy is willing to make their countrymen have fun.

Unlike many other embassies in the UAE (the British, for example), the U.S. Embassy here doesn’t seem to have many (any?) fun events — aside from those staged by the USMC. At least none that we have heard about.