I have this thing where I sometimes think that girls are faking IOIs. here is a quick story. I just moved back to Australia and am battling with different circumstances here, and believe me IT IS DIFFERENT. On one hand girls here seem impossible and on the other they seem so, so easy and as a result i get somewhat confused.

So last night I was in a high-end type bar. Most women there were too old for me (as im 22) but I still opened quite a few sets, successfully and not, i wasnt really interested in anyone. Eventually I found and opened a 3 set that was my age and hot and they completely threw me off. All three were like 8s so I opened indiscriminately.

I walked straight up out of nowhere and asked an opinion thing (just a canned opener I made up and use all the time about whether an earing would look good on me), so what happened? I wasnt even done with the opener when the girl on the left stroked my arm with both hands and said "I think you should get one here" touching my upper ear lobe.

I am so unused to isolating within 15 sec of opening that I just ignored and continued the conversation. In about 2min I noticed that the girl on my right was leaning into me like WAYYY too close and kinoing my arm, the one in the middle just liked talking a lot so I dont think she was interested but just liked the sound of her own voice. Although she did later kino me a bit and mentioned several times that she was single. Eventually, the conversation dried up a bit and they turned away from me a tiny bit so I excused myself and left intending to come back, which I didnt.

Um basically, I guess my question was what should I have done in that situation and did anyone here experience anything similar ever?

I think you should have reached out with your Jedi mind powers and tried to feel the situation, and not get stuck in verbal head space. They were into you. Doesn't matter if it was a lot or a little, touching is touching. But you didn't feel the vibe, didn't know how to respond to or participate in the vibe, so you fell back on verbal scripts. Which aren't as good as vibes.
Then eventually this happened. More conversational skill could prolong things, but at some point you have to move on to something. I think you were unable to feel what you needed to move on to.

Reminds me of a time, a long time ago, when I didn't understand the positive vibes I was getting from this gal. I had gotten her to dance with me, but I was underconfident about whether she actually liked me, what my role was, and I was not feeling the vibe. So I made this totally horrid 'dip' with her at one point and she said, "Oh GOD." I did an awful job and really didn't recover from it. In hindsight I realized I was supposed to take charge, recognize the fact that she liked me, dance confidently, and give her a big horny sexy dip. I was too AFC at the time to automatically think it was "ok" to do all of that. I needed / wanted signs and signals about what I was supposed to do, not recognizing that I was already in the zone, despite very little previous effort on my part.