Christmas in Thailand!

December 25, 2010

Senne's Summary: We enjoyed a Christmas Eve Party at our hotel with food, wine, music and games!

Merry Christmas everyone! Steve and I got to spend Christmas our favourite way… with sunshine and beaches 🌴 The Thai people don't really celebrate Christmas as most of them are Buddhists… but they make an attempt because they know it’s important to a lot of the tourists.

Our resort had a "Compulsory Christmas Party" This means that you will be charged for it even if you don’t go. So we went. Besides who doesn’t want to go to a Party?

The party started with one of the Asian Countries’ favourite kind of drinks, the “Welcome Drink”. In Asia, you can get a welcome drink at a variety of places… a hotel, a restaurant, a bar, a spa, a tour spot, and even on a junk boat! I can’t even remember how many welcome drinks we’ve had over the last few months! This time our welcome drink was some lovely guava juice in champagne glasses. Very green and festive! This has been Steve’s favourite welcome drink thus far. It was super yummy!

Side note: our least favourite welcome drink was in Saigon. It was some kind of cold tea and milk… it tasted like poop… seriously. Steve took one sip, made no attempt to conceal his facial expression, put it down on the hotel lobby desk and didn’t touch it again. I, being more polite, took at least three sips and disposed of it in the hotel room. Steve proceeded to make fun of me and wouldn’t come near me for the rest of the night ☺

Oops, I digress…back to Koh Samui. We are now seated at our table for the Christmas Party. Then our wine arrived. It was very expensive so we didn’t waste a single drop of it… mom you would be very proud of us. Now we had red and green drinks at our table. See how festive we are???

Shortly after that, the buffet line opened. The dinner was fabulous. There was turkey and other Christmas dinner stuff (no stuffing 🙁 ), lots of Thai dishes, Vietnamese spring rolls, various vegetables, and various meats including the very famous “pork lion”. (We had received a menu in our room, and were surprised and excited to find “pork lion” on the menu. Not surprisingly, it tasted just like pork loin... Yes, we know it was just a typo… but this is just one of the ways our very strange but entertaining conversations start…) There was also a very yummy dessert table.

This "pork lion" is amazing!

During dinner there was a guy playing live music. It said he was a two-man band. I’m not sure if his second man was sick, if his computer was his second man, or if perhaps he had multiple personalities. Anyway, it was nice to hear live music.

There was also periodic Thai dances performed by some young girls in Traditional Thai costumes.

The entertainment for the night also included some “games” that needed audience participation. The audience was not chomping at the bit to get up there, so Steve went up for the first game with another guy named Albert. They tried to get three people to go up, to no avail. Turns out, the game was a competition about who could do Thai dancing the best. I, of course, thought Steve was the best… but it was a tie. 😀 The best part was that Steve won a bottle of wine for his efforts… okay not true… the best part was watching Steve do Thai dancing on the stage!

Later, they tried to get people up on the stage for the second game… no one would go… so I went (Me on stage!!! Steve was very proud of me). Finally another lady from Sweden came up on the stage. Our game was the ring toss. It was one of those little plastic toy rings that you throw to a plastic tower. Let me tell you that it is not easy to throw those rings on there. I eventually had to cheat to get one on there! And guess what? I won a bottle of wine too. We gave one of our bottles to the nice couple at the table next to us… in the spirit of Christmas and all 😀

Trust me it is harder than it looks!

Soon it was time for the “lucky draw”. Basically they drew table numbers out of a hat and gave out prizes like free beer, cocktails or t-shirts. My favourite part about this was the owner’s grandson who was helping her. He was about 4 ½ and the cutest little thing.

He had on this giant tie (must have been his dad’s)! All night as he walked through the restaurant I was calling him my little “Tie Guy”. Steve noticed that he was also a little “Thai Guy” 😉 The little Tie Guy was announcing the numbers in English very enthusiastically. It was very very very cute.

He loved using the microphone!

At the end of the night the owner gave a little thank you speech. It was nice because she explained how she’d never been to a Christmas Party because she has never left Thailand, but wanted her guests to have one because she knows Christmas is important to them. I thought that was very sweet.

Me, my little Tie Guy, and his mom

After that we saw the real Santa sneaking down the beach (I think he was trying to stop for a beer) and reminded him about all our friends and family back home waiting for him to arrive with their presents. If he made it to your house it’s probably because we told him you’ve been extra good 😉

Merry Christmas everyone!