All I Want For Christmas Is Electricity

Just kidding, we were living the dream Swiss Family Robinson style and I loved it!

Christmas 2012 was very surreal. Every year I take a moment of silence for people celebrating Christmas in the Southern states because I just cannot fathom how 80 degrees and sunny feels festive and Christmasy in any way. I have now lived it first hand and my opinion hasn't changed. Despite the crazy pop-Asian Christmas shows and twinkling lights everywhere, it felt like any normal day.

Just because it didn't feel like the holidays didn't mean we weren't going to force it. First we foraged for the best Christmas tree we could find and trimmed its brown, ant infested branches with beer caps, leaves and tied up pieces of Wipe On DEET sheets.

Vertical Christmas tree made possible by lots of dental floss securing it to the post.

Next we followed our crossdressing waiter to a Christmas Eve party down the beach. It wasn't very 'umpin but we succeeded in procuring free Santa hats for everyone, got a few dances in and made our new friends sing Christmas carols all the way back up the beach.

The best part of Christmas was meeting two Polish girls, Goja and Ewalina, at our bungalow. I spend every Christmas Eve at my Babcia and Dziadzia's house celebrating Wigilia. Part of the celebration is that before dinner, everyone gathers in the living room, we say a prayer and then we break oplatek. Oplatek is essentially edible cardboard with a pretty design carved on top. Everyone gets a sheet of oplatek and you go around the room giving every single person a hug, telling them "Merry Christmas, Peace be with you." Then you each break off a piece of the other's oplatek and eat it. You have to be careful around children in the group as they will try to take the majority of your oplatek before you have a chance to get to all the people in the room.

So when Goja and Ewalina told me they had oplatek I almost started crying from happiness. We gathered all our new friends together and broke oplatek. What I didn't realize is that traditionally people give personalized well wishes, not just a simple "Merry Christmas". My family must skip this step because there are so many of us, it would take 2 hours before we could eat.

Trying to come up with personal well wishes for people you've only known for 1 day can be a bit of a challenge so you frantically try to remember what they've told you about themselves then make a lot of assumptions. Let's see....you've quit your job to go traveling indefinitely...sounds familiar. "My wish for you is that you have safe travels with not very many mosquitoes or cockroaches and that when you return home you find a fullfilling job and meet the man of your dreams." Or to the lesbian couple trying to get pregnant via the sperm bank: "May you find potent sperm from someone with a high IQ that will produce a baby that resembles your beautiful wife." There is no way you can walk away from breaking oplatek without a huge smile on your face.

Breaking oplatek in matching pants

Christmas morning we opened $1, will probably break in two days, night market bought gifts under our tree. We also gave some Light My Fire sporks (best spork EVER) to our new friends.

Goja & Ewalina doing their best "American smiles"

We finished the day with a scary hike through the jungle, in the dark, with only 1 working headlamp and then feasted on an all-you-can-eat, Thai style Christmas buffet.

Merry belated Christmas to all our friends and family!!

Love,
Kim

Head to Toe in a Bungalow

Koh Jum, Thailand.  December 21st-26th.  4 nights, 1 bed, 3 people, 1 mosquito net, 7 cockroaches, one love. (see Reggae reference below).

Koh Jum is SO BEAUTIFUL.  It's a remote island just a couple hours boat ride from Krabi with about 6 different bungalow resorts lining the empty beaches, a tiny adorable town just a 20 minute jungle walk from the resort with the most friendly locals in the world, and an off the beaten path feel.

Giddy after jumping off the ferry onto a long tail boat that would take us to the island

      

Kim & Kyle walking to the beach to enjoy sunset with a Chang

It was almost everything we hoped it would be in terms of relaxation and beauty, but we just could never get 100% comfortable there.  I'd say for me it started with a conversation I overheard on our first trip to town to get water.  We trekked through the jungle behind the bungalows until we popped out into a little town with a small school, 5 convenience type shops selling the same things, and a few homestyle (as in out of someone's actual home) restaurants.  As we walked up to one of the shops there were some travelers hanging out having a beer and I overheard one guy say to the other "so mate, were you ever able to get that sn@ke out of your daughter's room??"!!!!!!!!!!!  WHY OH WHY DID I HAVE TO HEAR THIS?  I wanted to run away and cry but I was scared that anywhere I ran I'd trip on a $nake or something- plus I realized I was on a tiny island and there was nowhere to escape to.  I guess this is that part when traveling makes you stronger?  

After the sn@ke-conversation-incident I was permanently a bit on edge, but Kim and Kyle aren't scared of them, so they were doing just fine.  It wasn't until we got back to our room and Kyle opened his backpack to find 7 cockroaches scurry out that he was pretty rattled too.  Kim held strong until she had a bug fly in her eye, a giant flying creature land in her hair, and got a slew of mosquito bites within a 15 minute time span that night.  On top of the critter-stress we were all under, the icing on the cake was realizing that the three of us were going to have to sleep head to toe in our two person bungalow.  

We three thrifty individuals thought we could save a few bucks by getting just one bungalow and adding an "extra bed", but since the extra bed turned out to be a blanket on the wood-planked-cockroach-ridden floor, we realized none of us were trying to sleep there.  That left us one option- and it was a very uncomfortable sweaty awkward option.  The three of us, for four nights, crammed under the mosquito net in one bed.  Did I mention how hot and muggy it was??  Ok just making sure you get the picture.  

Our Christmas in paradise wasn't exactly what we anticipated, but we made the best of it and ended up having an awesome time (when we weren't applying bug repellent or trying to sleep).  In true summer camp fashion we made some great friends and learned some new games.  And also like summer camp- it all culminated in a Reggae Night Party where we danced our faces off with all our new friends until the wee hours of the morning.  One Love!

Awesome Reggae band complete with matching mustaches

Let the dance party begin!

The most eclectic group of people all celebrating together 

Time for bed!