Christmas Saigon Style

It's the holiday season and so of course I'm thinking of friends and family and missing home. Though Christmas here was lovely; there were Santas and Reindeer and fairies and disco balls and bunnies and butterflies, because the Vietnamese don't go for all that low-key American Christmas cheer and figure why not break out ALL the good stuff. The children dressed up in little santa suits complete with faux fur trim and hats, despite the fact that the nights here are in the eighties, which I think supports my theory that the Vietnamese have a lower body temperature than the usual 98.6 F, and now the kiddies also have to wear helmets over their hats because Vietnam has a (gasp) HELMET LAW! So the streets filled with helmeted families on motorbikes, mini-Santas riding right up front, going out to see the myriad lights and decorations erected by the city in honor of birth of Christ, or the wacky flying white guy and his flying horses with horns who breaks into your house and leaves things, depending on if you are Catholic. The traffic jams were incredible.

For me it wasn't "just like the ones I used to know", there was no cranberry at the markets, I had to make do with extra sugar in my tea in lieu of candy canes and cookies, and while there were plenty of fires they were mostly the charcoal kind used for roasting the various parts of animals. So it's not exactly like home but still, it was Christmas after a fashion, a disco/early eighties fashion. An aside here to note that satin, always a favorite of the Vietnamese, has crested to new heights on the back of the eighties revival and I have to say I have never seen anyone look good in a mono-color satin pantsuit not even teeny smoking-hot Vietnamese chicks. Same goes for any fitted satin dress not made for the wearer seconds before dressing so as to flatter the body shape of right now not the one from three days ago before your boobs/butt/belly changed size /shape due to the lunar cycle. It's nice to see that some things are the same the world over.

Now I'm staring down the barrel of 2008. January first has a funny status here because the big New Year celebration is Tet and that is still a month away, true there may be parties and countdowns and perhaps even high shoes involved (another fashion aside, I've been living in flip-flops and can't understand what I ever had against them. I know they are not actual "shoes", more like a way to go barefoot and not have your foot lacerated, but in their capacity as foot-laceration preventors they are amazingly effective and comfortable) but all the really big dealio stuff is still to come. Though, as they say in AA, every day is a new beginning right? So maybe I will celebrate the first day of the rest of my life on January 1 and get dressed up (still debating about the flip flops) to go out and order a mocktail.

Cheers and Happy Holidays everyone.

PS it occurs to that the proximity of the AA reference and the mocktail might suggest to some that I am a recovering alcoholic, I'm not it's just that alcohol makes me hurl.