Christmas Time in Thailand

This year is the first time I’ve not been at home for Christmas.  It was a certainly a strange feeling not being with the family, doing the things we always do and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but I still had fun nonetheless.

As you may know, Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist country.  For this reason I didn’t really expect much in terms of Christmas celebrations.  I couldn’t have been more wrong!  They do have Christmas here, but only in the purely commercial sense (and they’re really excited about the new year too it seems).  Whilst some people will view that as a bad thing and a devaluing of the tradition behind Christmas, for me it was a nice reminder of home, none more so than at school on Christmas Eve.

I turned up for work on Thursday and found out we had no lessons and all the kids we’re just having massive buffets in their classrooms.  I remember having similar things in my school when I was a kid but I distinctly remember the food being very basic supermarket own-brand food.  Not here though.  KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, you name it, it was there.  Naturally I went into greedy mode and promptly stuffed myself until I could barely move.  Not the best example to set to the children but what the hell, it’s Christmas!!!!!

Before this, however, I had a duty to do.  The nursery class (1-2 year olds) is my domain.  It’s in a separate building to the main kindergarten and no other teacher really goes there.  So naturally it was myself who was designated to be Santa Claus.  My company had kindly bought gift for all the students (about 50 in total) so I was tasked with dishing them out and hopefully not terrifying the children in the process!!  Thankfully, I only had one of them crying (but she’s touch and go on crying most weeks to be honest) so all in all a success.  I have the whole event on video so I’ll get it posted in the near future (along with a lot of photos).  I was absolutely boiling in the suit (notwithstanding the fact that the air con was on arctic setting) but I got free food, a few presents off some of my students and didn’t have to teach all day so I can’t really complain.

When Christmas day itself came I unfortunately had to work (at a different kindergarten to Christmas Eve) so my Christmas spirit wasn’t at its peak.  Nonetheless, I had more presents to give out, only this time it was chocolate (a great way to keep children quiet for a few minutes).  I had to teach my normal lessons but couldn’t resist taking my Santa hat in and a CD of Christmas songs to keep myself merry.

After work was when the fun began.  My flatmates and I had all bought each other presents (and I had one sent to me from my family) so I felt like a bit of a kid again when we got to open them.  My family sent me socks (it was a joke, they also put a note in telling me they’d deposited some money into my account for me) and my flatmates got me a new electric shaver and one of those inflatable yoga/Swiss ball things.  Not the most interesting of presents but I have some issues with my knees and the ball was probably one of the best gifts I could have received, I was well pleased .

After the present opening we headed down to an Irish pub in the centre of Bangkok to have to works for Christmas dinner.  Turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, sprouts, we had it all!!  After gorging ourselves on the food (it was a buffet so several trips for food were made) and sinking several pints of beer it was off back home for several more beers before I fell asleep in the sofa still in my Santa hat in true Christmas style!!

• Official Thailand blog