Christmas at the beach - oh, where is the beach? (Christmas Travel Stories)

Member Name: sun-is-shining

Product:	Christmas Travel Stories
Date:	28/05/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: BeerLao, Westlife and seaweed - what else do you want?

Disadvantages: I got the sunburn of my lifetime

If you spend your Christmas Holidays in Asia there's of course only one thing to do - go/fly/drive to the next beach and have a great time unwrapping Christmas presents while taking sun, enjoying a coconut and listening to the lazy sound of tropical waves.

That was exactly my plan for 2008, preferable a small not too crowded beach in Vietnam, maybe even a small white sand island where we have to catch our own fish?!

Well, yeah. As I said, it was a plan. Just a view days before Christmas we realised that we were still in Laos, totally broke and all flights to the beaches were fully booked. Now it is quite difficult to be stuck somewhere in Asia without being close to the beach given that Thailand has 3000km coastline and that Indonesia and the Philippines consist of pristine sand beaches. Laos on the other hand has no coastline at all :-/

We were just discussing alternative plans like ignoring the whole thing and celebrating Christmas one month later in Burma or faking photos and just blaming that we've been to a wonderful little island in the middle of nowhere, when we found a beach! Of course, the Mekong runs through Laos and in some places the riverfront looks just like a beach - replace the turquoise water with something muddy brown and the good looking bikini girls with grumpy fisherman but all in all a perfect beach! I instantly felt in love with this place, it's a perfect beach just a 10min walk from our GH. We spend long days there, having picnic, reading and sometimes even swimming in the freezing cold Mekong.

The 25. was of course something spacial; we took our little Christmas tree with us and decorated the shrubs with glitter and other kitchy x-mas stuff. The presents were great, Hallo Kitty sticker, a little Panda and one of these great (and annoying) waving cats.
The weather was perfect, sunny and warm, but still it didn't really feel like Christmas.

The thing we really missed was a real family and friends get together over a big, big dinner. Mentally prepared for another noodle soup and curry evening we arrived at our Guesthouse - and found it glittering with Christmas decoration, a massive tree on the front door and Westlife singing atmospheric songs from an old cassette player. Mama&Papa (the owner of the GH) and their lovely daughters organised an amazing Christmas party for all the guests - Lao style of course! We had spicy pasty, fried seaweed and morning glory with an unlimited stock of homemade garlic LaoLao (a rice whisky mixed with herbs) and BeerLao.
The highlight were he Christmas hats everyone wore and singing songs in at least 6 languages and meeting great new people.

This was surly the nicest Christmas dinner i ever had in my whole life. Normally you sit together with you family, half of whom you never see throughout the year and try to be as nice as possible while your uncle gets utterly drunk, your cousin starts to argue with his girlfriend and you are so bored that you nearly fall asleep. Well, that's Christmas for me anyway.
But this year is was what it should really be about. Being nice to others, sharing what you have (even if it's just half a bottle of Tigar Whiskey) with strangers, being happy!

If you don't know what to do this year for Christmas then book a flight to Luang Prabang, get a room at Oudomphong Guesthouse and have the Christmas celebration of your lifetime!

Summary: A quite unique way to spend your Christmas