Christmas celebrated, New Year anticipated

The Norwegian Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square
 this year is surrounded by children's poems 

After my flying visit to England in December, I returned to the "Juniper Tree" just in time for our busiest period. The decorations went up in the Office, Reception & Dining Room and we hit Makro for the veg. order for Christmas dinner! Not a Brussels Sprout to be had, so we settled for snow peas, carrots, roast potatoes, mini sweet corns and green beans. The turkeys were collected, still hot, from the supermarket who cooked 2 of them for us and along with hot stuffing and with "pigs in blankets"; our Christmas Feast was amazing! The Tables in the dinning rooms had holly, tinsel and candles and the extra green table cloths transformed it's usual rather functional appearance; making it truly special.

Extra, temporary, staff were needed for the Festivities!

Danger men at work!

The next challenge was to get 2 large turkeys, two large rolled turkeys and 2 large hams carved before they went cold. Ben was a willing volunteer and together we managed to supply the 70 plus guests with a choice of neatly sliced (by Ben) or rather mutilated meat (by me!) No one complained about the taste, and following the meal, Joan and I persuaded the kitchen Staff to come into the dining room for a well deserved cheer; this turned into a spontaneous standing ovation with compliments shouted in at least half a dozen languages that I could hear.

Cool?

Of course, the hi light for us was having Emma with us for Christmas. Being on duty, we couldn't get out and about much in Chiang Mai, but we did escape to the water-falls near Doi-Sutep National Park.
Here, by a rock pool we enjoyed a lovely cool off, as the temperature during the middle of the day was around 32 deg.
Emma really only has two major fears one is sudden loud noises; fireworks, in particular and the other is creepy crawlies. These we were able to provide in quantities. A nightly routine developed of banging the wooden walls of her house before returning home each night! Only one persistent Gecko, managed to disrupt her sleep. As for fireworks, one of the guests has persuaded us to have some on New Year's Eve- so it's probably good that Emma is safely back in Egham; as Thai fireworks seem so much more explosive.

Another excursion was to our favourite food venue. The official name of this restaurant is "Lemon Grass" but the tag line for their advertising says it all: "No View, but Tasty!" The walls, you will notice are covered in genuine graffiti messages about the amazing food that is not only very inexpensive but arrives quickly, is hot (not always thought to be a virtue here) and the staff seem genuinely pleased to have you in their establishment!

Wot, no chop-sticks?

Messages can be read from visitors from every Nation, celebrating all kinds of events and of course many on holiday but they all have one theme, They want to come back!

That explains that, then!

 Of course the real gems in the Chiang Mai catering world are Ouan and Phet, our Cooks at the Juniper Tree. Pictured below, on Christmas morning, they remained calm and smiling throughout the long job of providing three full meals. They do get the day off on New Year's Day and this will give Joan and I an opportunity to get into the kitchen.

One of our guests, a former baker, suggested we make Pizza for our evening meal at New Year. He and others quickly offered to join in and so we are planning a pizza feast! We expected to make breakfast and soup for lunch but now we are going the full hog and taking orders for various toppings to get from Makro tomorrow! (Where would we be without Makro?)

On all the big occasions  everyone here wants to skype/facetime etc to their families around the globe, It's fascinating to watch as people calling different time zones gather and disperse in hourly groups. We had a little of this as we fixed to contact both Richard and Joanne at 10 O'clock their time, Richard being with Andrea's family in Berlin meant that we had a hour with them before speaking to Joanne and Jon in Reading. Some of guests, however, had lists of people in many time zones to fit in. The technology is great an it really helps you to feel less far away after these calls.