Noel vui nhe!

Nope, no christmas snow storm for us in Ho Chi Minh City. But we did go through a whirlwind of celebration, organization and fun. It didn't feel like Christmas but we still managed to stuff ourselves silly in true Christmas tradition.

A group of 10 misplaced foreigners gathered on our roof for Christmas dinner. We shared stories of Christmas Eve excursions and celebrations and began the drinking a wee bit too early. Our Christmas feast consisted of barbequed shrimp alla Donna, rice, salad, spicy vegetable stir fry and a duck with it's head still on! The duck beak of course became a focus of the fun later in the evening. We opened gifts given to us by Santa Mat and reminisced about Christmas in a Christmassy country while Frank Sinatra dreamed of a white Christmas in the background. The Christmas celebrations continued in a downtown bar that took me a while to reach after a brief run in with Johnny Law. The and I were pulled over by a cop and he had his bike confiscated by a very grumpy looking police officer. Poor, poor The! But we're going to all chip in some christmas spirit and rent him a bike today. After everything he has done for us, it's the least we can do. It was a Merry Christmas but oops, I forgot, it wasn't Christmas! That, according to the Vietnamese was the 24th... My bad.