Christmas in Bangkok

At the age of 35, this was my first Christmas away from home, and I was prepared for a certain amount of misery and homesickness. But such was not the case. (I'm sure the fact that I did get to touch base with family over Thanksgiving helped.) It most certainly did not resemble any kind of post-card Christmas, but I was surprised and delighted with the man little bits of Christmas tradition I was able to find and/or create here in the tropics.

As soon as I got back from our family Thanksgiving in Orlando, I officially declared it Christmas season by hanging up the full-sized Christmas tree poster I had brought with me and breaking out the Christmas carol CDs. White lights taped tot he tree and colored lights strung across my bbalcony completed my home decorating for the season -- that is until school let out for Christmas vacation and I decided I really did need a tree I could actually hang ornaments on, so I invested in the two-foot-high variety, and another string of lights.

At school I spent a week reading Christmas stories to the kids and gaining their assistance in decorating the library with Christmas craft projects. As I mentioned in my chapter about school, there was something startling about realizing that for most of these students Christmas is a very foreign concept. They know about it -- they can rattle off the associated vocabulary: Santa, reinder, snow, Baby Jesus, gifts, trees, etc. But it's not their own -- it's obvious they haven't been surrounded with it annually since birth like kids back home. My heart twisted when faced with the question, "Why doesn't Santa come to Thailand?" All I could do was shrug and speculate that he must only visit those who celebrate Christmas.

The last weekend before school let out for break was our last chance to celebrate with friends before everyone scattered to the four winds. Satuday a bunch of us made our way to a local shopping mall that has an ice-skating rink. It was such a delight to be cold! I was wobbly to say the least -- as I tottered around near the wall I calculated that it's been thirteen years since I was last on ice-skates. But it came back to me as I warmed up -- right up until I started to get cocky, thinking, "Yeah, I remember how to do this." That's when I belly flopped. Ouch! We rounded out the evening by heading off to a movie theatre (another place we get to be cold) to see The Holiday, a movie that put a sunny and a snowy Christmas side by side. Sunday was my day to bake Christmas cookies -- an absolute Christmas necessity in my book. A few friends stopped by to lenda hand, we had hot buttered rum, listened to Christmas carols, and one gal brought along It's a Wonderful Life, my absolute favorite Christmas movie:)

When school let out I had one day to get ready for company (and decorate the 2-foot tree I decided I had to have). My first house guests since coming to Thialand arrived on the 21st. Leslie, the teacher friend with whom I kicked off this whole international aventure flew down from China with one of her colleagues, Becky, to soak up a little Thailand sun. Leslie's daughters, Natalie & Marilyn arrived from the States to meet up with their mom. I was officially on tour-guide duty (which was kind of a joke, given how few of the tourist sights I'd been to see myself yet). In between all the sightseeing (more on that in another entry), we were all looking fo those bits of holiday cheer to convince ourselves that Christmas really happens in tropical climates, too.

Given that the people of Thailand are more than 90% Buddist, I was surprised at how much Christmas decorating/music there is around here. That being said, the decor still does not quite hit the "traditional" mark very often. Nver before have I seen Christmas trees in so many hues -- bright red, hot pink, royal blue, brown, etc. The worst were the bright-colored trees outside one shopping mall that were missing their tops -- Christmas shrubs? My favorite moment was on the afternoon of Christmas Eve as we were riding the skytrain into the city for a little sightseeing. At the end of our car was a group we decided must be from a Thai Christian Church. They had matching red shirts and Santa hats and hand instruments, and they were caroling on the train. We went down to sit by them and joiined in, sometimes with us singing the words in English while they sang in Thai. It was fabulous!

After a day of sightseeing we had dinner at the Bourbon Sreet Cafe, which was offering atraditional Christmas buffet with all the fixings. We stuffed ourselves to the point of food coma (another holiday tradition, of course) before making our way to a 10pm caoling and 11pm service at one of the English-language Christian churches. The parking lot hosted a life-sized nativity scene and an array of Christmas lights, and around midnight we were treated to tneding the evening as an impromptu candlelight service when the church's electricity went out in the middle of communion. Whatever the mysteries of their electrical system, the outside lights remained on, including the one that illuminated the stained glass window behind the altar. It really was a rather magical way to end the evening.

Christmas morning we turned on the carols and opened presents just like aat home before spending a good chunk of the day loung by the pool (not like at home). The truly oddest part of the day was the realization that the reason we practically had the pool to ourselves was because for most of my neighbors it was an ordinary Monday -- kids were in school and adults at work.