Our Canadian Christmas

Can’t believe that it’s the end of December already.  We’ve been traveling in SEA and surrounds for over 11 months now but from the planning stages of this trip, it had been our wish to spend Christmas with our Canadian family in Vancouver.  While we were looking forward to seeing Aunts, Uncles and cousins again, some of whom we had not seen for over 2.5yrs, and to experience a ‘Canadian Christmas’ we were a bit wary about this leg of our trip too.

Hong Kong-- Bright Lights, BIG City

In the scheme of things, the 6 nights/5 days that we spent in Hong Kong was a decent amount of time to spend in a city, especially with 2 kids in tow.  But for precisely that reason, we wish we had another 3x that amount in order to have really explored the city.  There is just so much to see and do there, that you don’t even know where to start.

Stuck On Koh Phangan

We don’t know of many travelling families who have been moving as continually as we have in the 10+ months that we’ve been on the road.  We’ve never stayed in any one place for longer than 12 nights or so.  But especially after our travels through India, we are a tad bit tired.  Yet still surprisingly (to us anyway) we ended up staying on Koh Phangan for 26 days, and loved every minute of it! 

So what did we do there?

Dear Santa, For This Christmas We Wish...

Christmas is a time of mixed feelings for us. When we were kids, Jim and I remembered it being an exciting and magical holiday, mostly likely due to the gifts from Santa and from our parents. But giving was fun too, and as kids that usually meant making something for our parents at school. As adults, it became a time to buy that special gift to show our loved ones how much they mean to us. But above all, Christmas meant visiting with family and friends.

But maybe it’s the times we live in, or simply ‘getting older’ but somewhere along the line, it seems that the magic has given way to pure and frenzied consumerism, especially in Western Christian societies. It now seems only about ‘what to get whom’, and how much we are going to spend on gifts and the size of the present. Instead of ‘warm and fuzzy’ get togethers, social events are instead often tense and attended with feelings of obligation. As you can tell, we’ve become quite jaded by Christmas—some might even say ‘scrouge-like'!