malkamikimaka - merry christmas

December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas! Once again the day is here, that magical day when special things happen. I woke early this morning, as I always do on Christmas, and walked out the front door of my Thailand beach bungalow to the scene in this photo. It’s a Christmas miracle. I guess I am on Santa’s nice list this year.

After over 10 days of fun (but intensive) travel through China, Lisa and I made our way to Hong Kong on 12/22 for a night’s rest before heading to Bangkok. China makes the ease and efficiency of Hong Kong look like you’ve just gone to heaven. Due to space constraints everything in Hong Kong is small. Think of the largest closet in your house downsize that by 1/3 and that was the size of the hostel room we stayed in at the Chung King Mansion in downtown Kowloon (the main land section of the city right across from Hong Kong island). Somehow, we fit ourselves, 3 large suitcases, 2 backpacks and a camera bag in there for a night. I spent the afternoon making the trek across town to China Air to purchase a re-issue of my return plane ticket while Lisa rested. That evening we made our way through the maze of the Chung King Mansion to the Taj Mahal restaurant for some of the Chung King Mansion’s most famous Indian food, we walked around with the rest of Hong Kong who was out Christmas shopping, then talked our new friend Ramsey into keeping the 3 suitcases at the hostel for the week and went to bed exhausted. Beside that we didn’t do much in Hong Kong.

The next morning we were up and at it and out the door by 7:30am headed for Bangkok. Our goal was Koh Samet Island a small 6k long island just off the southern coast of the upper gulf of Thailand. Our transportation to our end destination - bungalow on Koh Samet - went like this: HK subway – airport shuttle – flight – shuttle bus – bus to coast – taxi ride (in the back of a mini-truck on small benches) – ferry ride – taxi truck (again) on a horrible dirt road – walk to our resort. We arrived almost 12 hours after leaving our hostel in HK. Waiting at the end of it all was a snug beach front bungalow with A/C lots of space and a toilet that you have to throw a bucket of water down to flush. After some of the best pad thai in the world and 2 mango shakes we were here to stay for a week.

For Christmas Eve we slept whenever we felt like it, floated around in the warm ocean water, ran our feet through white sand the consistency of fine flour and generally marveled that we everything had worked out so well for us. Our resort is packed into a small stretch of beach with about 7 other bungalow resorts. It’s one of the smaller beaches so we are sharing the place with a small amount of Euros and that that is about it. Because of the Bangkok airport shutdown 3 weeks ago the typical high tourist season for Thailand isn’t happening this year. It’s sad to see so many of the bungalows empty, but it’s working for us.

Lisa found out about our place after digging through several internet sites and finally found a blog detailing this particular place. Based on that information we had a friend of ours, Margo – who speaks Thai – call ahead and make a reservation for us at the Candlelight Beach resort. We weren’t sure they would hold the reservation as Thais on these islands tend to be very laid back and not too organized. But there was Lisa’s name was on the calendar for a beach front with A/C and hot water and here we are in a perfect place for a week.

For Christmas Eve dinner we ordered up lots of pad thai, basil fried shrimp, 4 mango shakes and a big bowl of tom ka (coconut based soup with chicken lemon grass and all that other yummy stuff that Thais put in their soups). We were so stuffed we had to take a long walk on the beach to work it through – life is certainly hard these days. When we got to the end of our beach stretch, about 15 minutes of slow walking, we sat on some beach chairs and watched Christmas fireworks, listened to the waves lapping and enjoyed the warm night air.

My only Christmas wish is that my family could be here with me. I love you all and hope that your Christmas is filled with the love of Christ and happiness. During this time in Asia I have been reminded over and over again of the love that the Lord has for each of his children individually. I pray that you feel that yourself and also pray that governments that restrict the practice of His gospel will change their policies in order to allow the knowledge of Christ to be preached freely. This would be the biggest Christmas miracle of all.

Merry Christmas from Koh Samet!