After spending the past 7 Christmases alone and in a foreign place, I stayed home this year. Nope. It had nothing to do with cheaper fares (more expensive, actually!) but with a conscious effort (read: guilty) to spend it with family. No regrets with this decision. No brainer, really. How can one even compare Christmas at home with solitary dinners at strange places where Christmas isn’t celebrated at all? Fancy candle-lit dinners ain’t a match to the familiarity of home. But being the traveler I am, I fly out this evening.
So I write this while waiting to check-in my flight to Bangkok to connect to
Mandalay. Fearing traffic and airport holiday mayhem, I arrive early. Too early, in fact. There’s no traffic and the airport counters are well-staffed. The young lady manning the x-ray machine at the entrance is a trainee being supervised by an older officer. “Is that packing tape?” She keeps asking him. I did pack one in my check-in luggage. She doesn’t ask me to open my luggage so I pick it up and leave her still verifying with her mentor if that’s how packing tape looks on an x-ray screen.
Merry Christmas! See you tonight, Bangkok.
My past Christmases:
2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2009 Mui-ne, Vietnam
2010 Hoi-an, Vietnam
2011 Siem Reap, Cambodia
2012 Luang Namtha, Laos
2013 Ubud, Bali
2014 Mandalay, Myanmar
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