Christmas festivities

On the 24th we had a champagne lunch with Ben and Lanette and then went home for some Christmas movies, rillettes and cheese.
On Xmas day, I taught in the morning and then started the festivities nicely with some champagne with Ben and and Lanette at home, followed by a lovely ‘chase the rat’ session. Yes... we have a rat. We were exchanging gifts and happily chatting about our upcoming trips for New Years– we're going to Hoi An and Ben and Lanette to Hong Kong, when I saw the rat trotting away in the living room, not at all phased by the four people laughing and talking loudly 3 metres away. We all perched ourselves on our chairs, and I ended up running upstairs while the other three chased the rat around the lounge. They found the animal in under the sofa, with a pile of breadcrumbs so big it must have been accumulating for weeks… from upstairs, all I heard was screaming, bangs, laughing and more screaming.

Xmas lunch was nice, we went to an all you can eat buffet with our good friend Nam. I had tons of sashimi , some clam chouder and grilled lamb. That’s the closest to a Christmas meal I could achieved in this very much Vietnamese restaurant, and even though it was not your traditional Xmas food, it was delish.
Nam was fun as always, it’s impossible not to have a great time with him. I couldn’t believe his ‘Xmas surprise’ though, he’s getting married in two months! I congratulated him and asked him if he was happy, he said not really because he’s not ready to get married but he’s reaching an age where he just has too… Nam’s 27 years old. I call that quite young to get married, but hey, it’s a different culture. Nam loves his girl, so it’s all good.

The afternoon was spent drinking Russian champagne (a weird reddish mixture) and Skyping with families. Something I learnt from this Skyping session: chatting to your loud family on Skype with a poor internet connection and almost no voice because of a bad cold is fun, but tough, and you will lose the little voice you had left. True story.
It was a quiet Xmas in the end, quieter than last year and hopefully than next year too, a lot of our friends here have gone already, a lot of the remaining friends were at work parties , I was sick and the weather was miserable. All the reasons why we kept it low key this time. We’ll have to compensate next year in Bangkok, by, I don’t know… going clubbing all night I guess.