Merry Christmas From Ho Chi Minh City (And Sorry About Those Emails)
Merry Christmas from HO HO HO Chi Minh City!
It’s after 8am here and all four kids in the house are still asleep. Not a peep out of any of them … worn out from our Christmas Eve water puppet show and the usual kiddie late-night excitement about tomorrow being Christmas.
So I thought I’d use this unexpected quiet time on Christmas morning to write something for my lovely readers.
Thank you for all your support for The Dropout Diaries over the past year. It’s been a year of highs and lows and I’m looking forward to more highs next year and less lows for our little family here, and for you and yours where ever you are in the world.
Our Christmas celebrations this year included a Santarchy walk through downtown Saigon on December 15. To participate, everyone had to dress in Santa clothes to spread the Christmas cheer. It was scheduled to start in a park before turning into a bar-hopping adults event. But I thought Miss M would enjoy a crowd of happy Santas in a park, so I took her along.
And … erm … the organisers switched the meeting point to a bar. Miss M and I were the only people in the park dressed in Santa outfits so I did what any normal mother would do … and took her to the bar to see the Santas. All 400 of them.
She was the only child in the group and she LOVED it.
I had intended to hang out with the Santas for half an hour or so, just enough time for one Christmas drink with my friends. Then I was going to bundle Santa’s little helper into a taxi and take her home.
But Miss M was in absolute heaven with hordes of adoring fans, things to jump off and loud music blaring away. She boogied with happy Santas in a series of fancy bars and danced Gangnam Style on the steps of the Ho Chi Minh City Opera House. We rolled home at 1am, undoing a year’s worth of 9pm bedtime training. It was a blast!
We will have Christmas lunch today with old and new friends from all around the world at a local cafe that has a kid’s playground.
It will be a global gathering with friends from Europe, the US, Pakistan, Australia and Vietnam. It’s going to be so much fun.
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your day is filled with joy and happiness.
And about those emails … so sorry.
You may have noticed the site looks a bit different these days. I bought a new “responsive” theme to make The Dropout Diaries easier to view on mobile devices. And it’s a bit of a buggy theme. I’ve had someone working on a few issues and every time he makes a coding change my email subscribers get a weird email. I don’t know how to stop it.
I’m worried you’ll get at least one more crazy email because the search function on the new theme just doesn’t work.
So, ignore the crazy blank emails, enjoy the crazy update emails. 🙂 And happy new year!
11 years ago
Oh so funny! I can just see you two bar-hopping with 400 santas until 1am! BEST PARENTING EVER I say!!! Hope you’ve had a great Christmas day. Look forward to following your adventures next year!
That sounds like such a fun outing and the pic of Miss M in her Santa outfit is DARLING! Merry Christmas and happy new year!
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