For all that is to be said about Phnom Penh, the beautiful and the desperate, it’s certainly no place for two home-sick Americans to spend the holidays. We had planned oo cn running away to Saigon but I got too caught up in researching work and volunteer opportunities to leave the city straight away. By the time we decided to move on it was too late to get our visas and still make it across the border to Vietnam before Christmas. Thankfully, David had the smarts to head south to the beaches of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. While I was still in Phnom Penh meeting with a few teaching opportunities he was wandering the sands looking for the perfect Christmas getaway. It paid off. When I arrived I found him relaxing in front of a thatched-roof bungalow set behind a few palms, all a mere 15 feet from the water’s edge. The sun had just set, the moon was rising, the air was salty and the next day would bring with it Christmas Eve. There wasn’t a sound around save for the waves because he found the farthest bungalow on the farthest beach away from the city center. It was called Otres Beach, and it was a 30 minute motor bike ride outside of Sihanoukville on a road no wider than a foot path just to get there. It was perfect.

We spent Christmas Eve wandering around the markets of Sihanoukville in search of presents and treats. It was a beautiful day. Just as hot as Phnom Penh but with the added benefit of the sea breeze. We stocked up on chocolates and peanut butter and eggs and coffee and all things Western that would give us some semblance of Christmas. Back at the bungalow we put up the little Christmas Tree and lights on the wide porch and settled in to a full day of serious relaxation. We met a few lone travellers who were strolling down our beach and invited them up for a beer. Though it was 100 degrees and the sights consisted of stray cows, sand, and palm trees, it was finally beginning to feel a bit like Christmas.

For lunch we strolled down the beach and found a little bungalow kitchen serving up some of the best curries I have ever had (and you know how much I like curry). After our meal we sipped on the too-sweet limeaide the Cambodians love so much and waited for the sun to set over the Gulf of Thailand.

When the stars started to shine a bit stronger we headed back to the bungalow to start putting out the luminaries. For those of you who don’t know, on Christmas Eve families in the Midwest line their streets with candles in paper bags or milk jugs called luminaries. I grew up doing this with my dad and brother. It was always freezing and windy and we would be out there with other families on our street lining everything with these candles until it seemed like the whole neighborhood was glowing and everyone’s hands were numb from cold. For me it was always the moment the last candle was lit that it was finally, truly, Christmastime. David had never heard of this, so I’m not sure if it was just an Ohio thing or just a Bellevue thing or what. Either way, there we were sticking all these candles in the sand as the tide was moving in. Our method wasn’t nearly as good as my fathers so the wind kept blowing them out, but it still made it feel a bit more like Christmas.

After the candles were lit, the tree was up, and the Christmas lights were wrapped around the one little window we had, I started feeling a bit funny – something wasn’t quite right. I needed to lay down and did, but for some reason that felt even more uncomfortable. Then the sweats came, an intense thirst followed, and for the rest of the night I laid in the bed under the mosquito net rolling back and forth trying to get the strange pain in my stomach to ease. By 3:00 am there were no doubts about what was happening: I was throwing up that curry I had for lunch as it clearly had given me food poisoning. Christmas day wasn’t much better. I laid in the sand and moaned and could hardly eat or drink a thing. Nurse David did what he could, but I mostly just slept in the sea breeze waiting for the nausea to pass. Merry Christmas.

I can’t complain too much, though. Even with the food poisoning it was a beautiful place to spend Christmas, and the sickness didn’t last more than two days. Thankfully I recovered enough a couple days later to take a boat trip with a local family out to the coral reefs near Bamboo Island. The family was quiet and sweet and took us to wherever it was we pointed. We ate a lunch of squid and shrimp caught that very morning on that very boat and it was delicious. We visited a few islands, went fishing, and snorkeled through beautiful corals. It was gorgeous, and we felt like we got to go behind the glass at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Sea urchins and caverns and blow fish and yellow fish and fluorescent blue fish and strange creatures moving with the current. I’ll never forget that day, and thank God we found some champagne at a Western market to go along with it.

We were a bit sad to leave but our visas had run out and we had no choice. The place was beautiful, the people kind and generous, and we had a truly relaxing time. If you want the real life bungalow-private-beach experience without having to take out a second mortgage, run to Otres beach now. It won’t be long before it’s all gone (rumor had it the government would be seizing the land, evicting the locals, and selling everything off to developers. We would have questioned this if we hadn’t witnessed it ourselves in the capital to the North).

[We have photos for the section below, they will be uploaded tomorrow 01.05.10]

We arrived back in Laos on New Years Eve. We decided we missed David’s family in Paxse enough to put off Vietnam for another few weeks, and of course we’re happy with that choice. As always we received a warm welcome, something now expected but no less appreciative. We hadn’t realized how much we missed the kids until they were running at us, giggling and yelling “Kay-been, Day-bid!” as we pulled up on our motor bike. We always feel like the family compound is a place filled with so much love, it’s impossible to not notice and take in some of the warmth. Especially with David’s uncle Ut, his wife, and their kids Jay and John. Always smiling and laughing and making up a new game that makes no sense to us but has them in excitement overdrive. The kids are a real fresh breath compared to Phnom Penh.

The last couple days we have been on our own in away. Jay and John, the only two in all of the compound who speak any English, have returned to Vientiane to go back to school. So, we are now communicating through hand signals and the 20 or so Lao words we have picked up just from hanging around. It can be frustratingly slow, but even when no one has a clue what the other is saying we somehow still all end up in big smiles. And the Lao smile is something to be remembered…

Oh! Exciting news. Some of the family members finished building their new little house on the compound and have officially moved out of their open-air bungalow. It has walls of concrete and real glass windows and tile floors and two whole rooms and everything. A big dinner with far too much BeerLao was planned last night in celebration as Uncle Aat, his wife, their two kids Joe (9) and James (2) spent their first night in their new home. The workers on the compound were happy, too, as two of them, Ooy (20) and Phun (23) got to move in to their new room right next door. We all feasted on fresh duck (which Yours Truly helped catch by being one of the herders, along with Joe), fish, a thousand different spices, sticky rice, and watermelon (which I learned last night is called Maak Muu in Lao). Everyone seemed generally happy. The roofing business, now nearly a year old, seems to be doing well, new building are popping up around the compound, everyone is getting a bit more comfortable, and we couldn’t be happier for them. They, in turn, couldn’t be happier to share their good fortunes with us. They continue to feed us way too much and every chance they get they entertain us or teach us a new Lao word or ask us something about our home country. It will be a challenge to say goodbye.

We leave Thursday for Vientiane, where the family is originally from. The kids are there now in school and of course they still have a house there where we will be staying for a bit. We have yet to visit Northern Laos so we are very much looking forward to it, and it will be nice to have our Smily Translator (13 year old John) by our side again. Afterwords we still hope to make it over to Vietnam (because if we don’t my father will surely never speak to me again).

We are alive, we are well, we miss home desperately, we are dealing (mostly) well with being together way too much, we are amazed daily by what we witness, we are surprising ourselves by our love for children (and often times, each other), we are tired, we miss hot showers, we are terrified and excited at what comes next, we are thankful to be without regret at the decision to take on such a journey as this, together. We are Living.

We miss you, we love you, Happy New Year!

Kevin and David