Christmas

Gilly and Sam were hosting Christmas in their house in Kratie, a town on the Mekong river about four hours from Sen Monorom. On Friday, after finishing off some work at the secondary school, Jeljte and I set off on our motorbikes, carrying a first aid kid and two toolkits full of things we didn’t know how to use. We thought it was worth taking them, though, in the hope that someone might stop to help us if we had a problem.

The journey was fine though and really beautiful. We stopped quite a few times to take photographs and arrived in Kratie at around 4pm. It was really nice to see Gilly, Sam and Ingran again, and after some tea and cake we went to watch the sunset on the river and meet the other volunteers who were also in Kratie for Christmas. Much as I missed hugging sweaty drunk people in Crosby village and going back home with my brothers and sisters to snack on food that we shouldn’t be eating till tomorrow, it was a nice Christmas Eve and we stayed by the river till around 11pm – very late by Cambodian standards.

Christmas morning was good: we had a fry-up and lots of tea, opened our pillow-cases (we’d arranged to buy each other $1 presents so everyone had four each) and, starting as we meant to go on, opened a bottle of cava. We also had a walk around the town, stocking up on salad and bread for lunch and had a teuk krolok (a fruit milkshake) by the river, before going back for a cheese baguette lunch. This might not sound like much of a Christmas dinner but some of us got very excited:

We got through several bottles of red wine before meeting the others at the river, where we watched another lovely sunset (Kratie is famous for them). 

Then we headed to a place called Joe’s for a Christmas dinner. I’d heard bad things about Joe’s and, although it was nice to be with lots of other volunteers, it turned out to be pretty bad – in fact, for the first time in quite a long time, I was chucked out of a bar! This was because Sam politely challenged Joe on the prices he was charging for spirits, which were twice what was advertised in the menu, and Joe, being drunk, told us all to leave. I was very glad to as I didn’t like him and the food had been pretty disgusting too.

Anyway, being escorted off the premises was great as it meant that we ended up a party at Kratie’s university, which Sam had been invited to as he’d taught English there. It was lots of fun and we danced a lot, and when in Cambodia it’s always nicer to be doing Cambodian things rather than being stuck in an overpriced expat bar.

The following morning we ate all the food that we hadn’t had time to eat on Christmas Day, and left at around 11.30am. The journey back was also beautiful and, although Jeltje’s back got a puncture, a family stopped to help us. (This isn’t strictly speaking true: Jeltje stood in the middle of the road and waved her arms so they didn’t have much choice.)

 

Happy Christmas to everyone and have a great New Year! We’re off to Phnom Penh so I’m looking forward to that.