Christmas and the following malaise

A point I have to clarify - I have just noted that the dates for my blog entries don't correspond to the actual dates that I was doing stuff, so please ignore them! I tried to edit the html for my website, but as they say, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I seriously goofed somewhere and had to reset the whole thing. I'm fairly sure that as well as deleting a whole range of important info from my blog, I probably inadvertedly tapped into the pentagon and started some strange war game.... Being the peaceful individual I am, I will not try that again!

Seems the Thai people think that Christmas eve is the day/night that you celebrate and so we did too... Went to a place called the Treehouse (reasonably renowned for being 'alternative' and one of the first backpacker places on Lonely beach). We had some lovely food and it was a good night. So good in fact the the roof caught fire - literally... (isn't that a song?). Someone let off a large firework a little too close to the building and part of it bounced on the deck (the Treehouse streches out over the seaon stilts) behind Jon and a dutch couple we had met called Sophie and Oliver ('hello'!) - they practically had their pants on fire (if that's not a song, it should be!). After a brief sigh of relief on establishing that all were ok, someone piped up with, 'shit - the roof!' which was then followed by an ascending crescendo of similar shouts and a lot of pointing... The roof - you need to understand - was made of dried leaves/palms. It burnt like the very devil himself. Everyone stood up and started to think about leaving (I already had an escape route planned via the sea as I'm good at these [see entry about earthquake]). One girl (Sonja from Germany - 'hello'!) exclaimed, 'grab the buckets, grab the buckets' and promptly did so and disappeared in the direction of the fire. Thank god she didn't get close enough to use them... the 'buckets' were our drinks of Vodka and Sangsom (Thai whiskey) mixes which you generally share as one to yourself may kill you (Thai red bull too). In other words, they were very nearly pure alcohol. Thankfully, someone had the good sense to run up the ladder with a large container of water (not just a small bottle of it as I spotted some poor chap tried and simply dropped the bottle and contents on the burning roof - very helpful) and put the rapidly spreading (it was quite amazing how quickly it went!) fire out. This was met with a big chear and everyone returning to their seats (cushions on the floor - very 70s) and continuing to party.

We danced... we drank more buckets... we danced some more and moved onto to another place (Nature Rocks - not sure if that's meant in the heavey metal sense) and danced and drank some more buckets. We went in the sea (partly accidently) and it was incredibly warm for three o'clock in the morning... we went home and Jon fell out of the hammock when demonstrating to Oliver and Sophie how robust it is. The we went to bed about four am. I suppose you could say it was a novel way to spend christmas eve - the problem was the next day came.... No surpirises about how i felt for most of christmas day... I just can't keep up anymore! It takes me a week to recover (I still am) so the plan to spend the day on the beach then have a slap up meal in the evening was very much appreciated...

Christmas morning at our hut

Jon and I had agreed a 100 Baht budget for 'silly gifts' so we each put this to action and made each other crackers from loo roll holders and newspaper... Only problem was Jon, being the lovely that he is, spent more than the agreed and got me a beautiful amber bracelet! The small elephant key-ring and wobberly 'love-bug' I got him didn't seem to compare. However, the custard cake (shaped like a small burger!) seemed to make up for it and all was well! After opening pressies, we headed for the beach, hammock and frisbie in hand. We were joined by a number of others and enjoyed a few Singas and good tunes until the sun began to set.

On the beach

After sunnning ourselves all day then scrubbing up and actually putting shirts on and the like (very civilized you understand) we (Jon and I, Sophie and Oliver, Alex and Sonja - 'hello all') headed off in the direction of the only 'posh' hotel on Lonely Beach thinking it would be a good place to have a nice christmas day dinner. The musac was tolerable after the joy at discovering they had (to all appearances) nice wine on the menu. We painstakingly chose the tipple of consensus and then enquired about the fish in order to have a real BBQ fish feast (the fish here is amazing - giant prawns and red snapper, barracuda and squid and much more all for about one pound fifty and [usually*] fresh out of the sea that morning). The waiter suggested at this point that we may not want the fish as it was *frozen!!! Imagine our horror - we had found the only place in Thailand that froze it's fish. We rapidly realised that the reason was probably the lack of custom (there were a smattering of people despite being a more grandiose establishment).... The waiter tried to back-track hastily as we made a bee-line for the exit and headed, once again to the Treehouse. It was fantastic there and we had a real feast (where a number of others unexpectedly joined us too) which was made all the better the next day after the reports of food poisoning afflicting all those who ate at the posh place the night before - is that mean? One of the highlights was a present from Polly and Allan (Jon's Mum and Dad) that we had saved until later... it was a small wooden christmas tree that had little ornaments you could hang onto the branches... everyone took a turn at decorating it and I think it reminded us all a little of home and christmas... a big thing especially for those who had been away for a long time...

Christmas meal at the Treehouse

So ended christmas eve and day....