In Thailand Christmas is not widely celebrated as it is a
Buddhist country, however unlike a lot of my teacher friends I managed to get a
week or so off over Christmas. I decided to go away to the island of Bali in
Indonesia and meet my friend from home Sophie who is also teaching in Jakarta.
We arrived on the island of paradise to pouring rain, and it
did not stop raining for three days. This put a drastic stop to our plans of
lying on the beach for the week. We spent the first few days just chilling and doing
a bit of shopping and squeezing in a lovely relaxing Balinese massage.
Christmas Eve
It was still raining when we woke up on the eve of Christmas
so we decided to embrace the weather and take a trip out for the day. We hired
a driver who took us to various attractions on the way to Udon a town inland on
the island. These attractions included a Hindu temple, some rice fields and a
coffee plantation.
Each were beautiful in their own right, but my favourite
stop was the coffee plantation. Our tour guide showed us how the coffee was
produced at this particular plantation. An Indonesian cat called a Luwak eats
the good coffee beans in their shells. They don’t digest them but poo them out,
the beans are collected cleaned off and removed from the shells. These are then
roasted and ground down in to what we know as coffee. We then sat on a beautiful
terrace overlooking the rice fields on the edge of a mountain and tasted the
“poo coffee” along with lots of other flavours such as ginger, vanilla and
chocolate.
After tasting the surprisingly delicious “poo coffee” we ventured off to the small town of Udon to find some lunch and do a bit of market shopping. For lunch we had an Indonesian dish called Soto Ayam which is like a chicken noodle soup, it was very tasty. It was nice to try different food, as the area we were staying in was very tourist it was hard to find Asian food. Another yummy Indonesian meal is Padang, you have a portion of rice and then lots of added extras like spicy veg and this delicious pork marinated in yummy spices I also tried catfish for the first time (bit bland I wouldn't recommend it)
That evening we put on our party dress and wondered off to a
bar which had free drinks for travellers from 9-10 so we took full advantage of
this, maybe a bit too much of advantages as we woke up on Christmas day with a
slight hangover.
Christmas Day
Waking up to glorious sunshine (yes it had stopped raining)
on Christmas day was very bizarre. It did not feel like Christmas at all in 28
degree heat and not being with family or heading off to church and then
returning for turkey and champagne. But Sophie and I had each other to get us
through. We opened a few presents (no stocking with an orange in the bottom
this year) and then headed off to meet some of Sophie’s friends at a bar on the
beach nearby. After a dip in the sea, a nap on the beach and some yummy food at
the bar we headed back to our hostel (guesthouse) to skype the family after seeing the most beautiful sunset ever!
Boxing Day
This sun was still shining!!!!!! It was our last full day in
Bali so we headed down towards the beach and found a glorious pool to sunbathe by.
We read our books, napped and took a dip in the pool until our stomachs decided
it was time to find some food. As it was our last day we treated ourselves to
the Hard Rock Café it was very filling but delicious.
We then had an evening of entertainment. We headed south to a temple and cliff to watch a traditional Balinese play while the sun set in the background. The dance/play was interesting to say the least but the costumes and dancing was incredible it was mesmerising and bizarre to watch. The perfect end to the first part of our holiday.
With Love from Thailand xxx
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