White Christmas

Christmas Eve at the Buddy Mart.

How Santa gets jolly.

Thailand is an extremely Buddhist country, but the locals in our farang-ified enclave at least give a cheerful nod to the Christian holiday. On Christmas Eve, the owner of the Buddy Mart -- a retired Thai general who served in Vermont on a military exchange program -- hosts a party in front of the store for local children, complete with balloons, treats, and a very questionable Santa, recruited from among the beer-drinking ne'er-do-wells who loiter outside most evenings. For some reason the Thai children are afraid to go anywhere near him.

Later, the pleasant Canadian fellow across the street invites us to join his mostly-Thai church congregation for caroling and hot cocoa at his house. We stay put on our side of the lane but I do walk out around 10 to lurk in the shadows for a listen. The next morning one of his children bring us cake and cookies; I really need to mosey across for a visit, one of these days.

Home for the holidays, kinda-sorta.

The next morning we activate the dimensional portal that is FaceTime to watch my family back in Oregon, where it's still Christmas Eve, as they open gifts by the fire. Why, it's almost like being there in person! Except it's not.

Christmas dinner with the nabes.

That night we're invited to an east-meets-west dinner of sorts at the nearby home of our Thai realtor, Sandra, and her husband, Patrick, from Seattle. Like just about everyone in our neighborhood, our hosts entertain outdoors on the front patio by the street. Our culinary contribution is the very traditional Christmas dish of green curry with chicken and Thai eggplant. Over the course of the evening do I drink a little too much Thai whiskey? Oh, probably.

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January 12 I fly back to Oregon for four weeks, which is all well and good ... except that my 90-day Thai travel visa expires on January 1. In other words, I'll be making a New Year's Eve visa run up to Burma next week. Stay tuned.