Dreaming of a White Christmas

24th- 25th December

If it had been up to me, we would have spent Christmas Day in Sydney. But early on in the planning stage, Robin had made plain his desire to be as far away as possible from any Christmas celebrations. Manado, in northern Indonesia sounded just the place. Wrong. We’d forgotten about country’s Dutch heritage – and the area we’d picked for its wonderful marine life, is one of the few centres of Christianity in an otherwise Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu collection of islands. We can see a large white cross on a hillside as we fly in, and as soon as we arrive at our English-owned guest house we are told that the Christmas Eve service in the village is about to start and would we like to come along. Under most circumstances, I would have been interested to see how they celebrate Christmas here, but I’ve been travelling for 24 hours, and gained another three with the time difference, so all I really want is a beer, a meal and a bed.

You can fly direct from Australia to Indonesia, but for reasons too complicated to go into here, I didn’t. Instead, I flew to Singapore, arriving just in time to go to bed and get up the next morning and head back to the airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur where – at the most confusing budget airline airport in the world, I had to clear immigration into Malaysia in order to check in for the flight to Indonesia and go back through immigration again – and finally fly to Manado, where it took another hour to buy a visa and get through the Indonesian immigration barrier. The more third world a country, the more layers of bureaucracy there are to enter it.

It’s getting dark as we are driven from the airport over unlit potholed roads that twist and turn through tropical forests and past shanty villages, narrowly avoiding unlit pedestrians and motorbikes. Our guesthouse for the next three nights is in a small fishing village – just a couple of steps up on the prosperity scale from the ones we’ve driven through. Having built their house in this unlikely spot, our hosts are enthusiastic sponsors of village life, and have built a clinic, extended the school and help support village children through their education. All very worthy, but can’t help thinking that this is going to be a strange place to spend Christmas.

Some of the village children come back after church and we let off fireworks that an Ozzie guest has brought with him. Most of them are of the flash, bang rather than ooh-aaah variety, so the kids love them, and all want to light them and hold them while they are firing. Luckily there are no major injuries. I find out later that the Ozzie is a health and safety manager!.

Christmas day begins at 6.40am with the sound of church bells – or rather a car wheel rim being hit with an iron bar. Boxing day begins in the same way. Maybe every day does. But after breakfast we can hear melodic singing, so I walk down to take a look. The church is packed out. Those who can’t get bring chairs from home to sit outside the door, or under the shade of trees on the opposite side of the road. We wish each other “merry Christmas” and I walk down to the end of the village – it doesn’t take long – to see the local fishing boats in the lagoon. The boats could have been made anytime in the last 800 years.

There’s not much a view, as both the village and the guest house are surrounded by mangrove. We head to the pool, which we share with the owners’ golden retriever. In 32degree heat and 100% humidity, it’s the coolest place around – and beats seeking shade under the trees, where I’m eaten alive by insects. For the first time on this trip, I’m missing England – and the first white Christmas in decades! Instead of fluffy white snowflakes, we have an afternoon downpour and retreat inside to read our books.
Later that night, we do have Christmas dinner, duck, chicken, beef – even roast potatoes – and Christmas Pudding! I’m wearing a lovely flashing pink tiara and Robin is resplendent in his flashing santa hat. But the best bit of today was phoning the folks at home.