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| Ho Ho Ho! |
I am not a stranger to spending Christmas away from home or working all through the holiday, but this year Christmas took on new, more surreal, dimension.
I spent Christmas this year in a dusty, dirty border town in north west Cambodia with 3 of my favourite people in Cambodia. J & me to our credit put in some effort to be festive in the face of sun, heat, dust & an absence of Christmas spirit. R to give him his due & with no previous experience also entered into the festive spirit & unlike my Father even made a concerted effort to be cheerful on Christmas day. Mr T - our driver - hadn't a clue what was going on but embraced the concept of eating lots of good food.
We travelled on Christmas eve - a 3 hour journey that J & I filled singing Christmas Carols & listening to cheesy Christmas songs. There was something remotely vengeful about it - pay back for all the hours of karaoke we have had to endure. R said the only one he liked was jingle bells.
In the evening we wanted to go somewhere special but the first place had washing hanging out to dry so was considered not appropriate. The second place had no washing so we were able to stay & enjoy a feast of fish, duck & beef. Pushing the boat out as far as it would go J, R & I shared a bottle of beer between us. J had bought hats, balloons & party poppers. You could see the owners of the restaurant were more than a little bemused by our behaviour but obligingly took the above photo.
Christmas morning I was awoken not out of excitement or due to the sound of sleigh bells rather the early morning run of trucks of cassava to the commercial border crossing - trucks with heavy loads & poor suspension on unsealed roads. It wasn't a white Christmas but it was a dusty beige.
J & I had made stockings & forced R to open his gifts in front of us. In Cambodia people don't open gifts in front of the giver - its consider rude or inappropriate. I think we can safely say we converted him to the consumerism of Christmas.
For breakfast we had khmer coffee & a mince pie that lovely Katie had sent in a Christmas care package to me. R was less convinced by this Christmas tradition.
I spent the working day training advanced airway.
For lunch R ordered my favourite khmer dishes & we ate rice.
In the afternoon we saw patients in the new ER - this is another blog entitled "just call me the grim reaper".
That evening we went for soup at the forest. The forest is an eating place near the border with Thailand - ironically named but maybe not intentionally - due to its situation in a decimated deforested area.
Soup involves a communal pot of broth with various vegetables & animals parts - tendons, brain, intestine etc. added in a DIY fashion. Its delicious but as J is a Vegetarian she stuck to rice.
We then went back to the hotel & watched 'Its a wonderful life' & I skyped my family.
I was feeling pretty homesick & sad after my alternative 25th December, but the following day instead of the traditional bubble & squeak with cold cuts & pickles we went for the best Bor Bor - rice porridge & then khmer dessert and I had the epiphany that Christmas is traditionally about being with people you love & remembering the absent ones, giving to people (which can be your time & not necessarily socks & smellies!) & feasting (but again this doesn't necessarily have to be your Mum's roast dinner & homemade pudding).
We did all that in SLN successfully & we even introduced jingle bells into the khmer psyche. However I may be insisting on a Christmas day in July when I return to the UK.
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| Alternative Christmas pudding |
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| Bubble & Squeak Cambodian style |
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