Festive Fun

For Christmas, Naomi and I were home alone in our house in Lahad Datu, with strict orders that we were not to spend that whole time doing work! For the first few days this was easy, it was the lead up to Christmas, and having not had internet for a few weeks, we had lots of catching up to do with the outside world and a bit of Christmas shopping to do... for each other!

After dropping Jo at the bus on the first morning we decided that the house wasn’t looking very Christmassy, so we set about making the DIY decoration that Claire had sent me, these included mini Christmas trees complete with glitter, baubles and tinsel, a super long paper chain and Merry Christmas bunting. Once the decorations were made we decided that we didn’t want to string them up on the wall and that they would look better on a tree.. but we didn’t have a tree, ironic considering we spend most of our time in the forest. With our creative heads on, we next made a tree out of a green jungle kit bag, 2 green hammocks, a box, an empty bin, a towel and a sleeping bag, topped off, of course, with a star.

Homemade Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve was a day of baking and Christmas carols, we set the Itunes Christmas playlist going and made cookies and apple pie. An old glass jar became our rolling pin and the worktable our counter top. We cut the cookies into all sorts of Christmas related shapes, including Naomi’s miniature nativity, and finished them with icing and chopped up jelly babies. The apple pie making doesn’t need explaining but in true homemade apple pie fashion it was topped with some hand cut leaves and eaten with a large scoop of ice cream! On Christmas Eve instead of putting on all our layers and headed out into the snow, we put on our sandals and insect repellent to attend the local Christmas carol service. Despite not really understanding what was going on the carol service was good with the Malaysian versions of well known Christmas carols and a kind gesture of a take away box of food being distributed to everyone at the end.

Cookies and Apple Pie

On Christmas Day Naomi and I decided that we wouldn’t cook a roast as the weather was hot and it would never live up to a home roast. We woke up on Christmas morning and santa had been so we sat and opened our stockings with the Christmas songs playing again. We decided that giving each other their presents would be too easy,  so we made treasure hunts around the house for each other. Naomi went first and was doing well at finding her clues and gifts until I gave her a clue which said ‘Sudah charged, Belum charged, so many batteries’...  in other posts I have said about how many batteries we have to charge for expedition and in the house we have 3 boxes full of batteries, but where was the clue! After much laughing and rummaging and a tiny bit of help as to which box the next clue was in, Naomi finally found the clue! With a bit of extra help from Naomi I managed to complete my treasure hunt and we sat and opened our presents. The best present from Naomi was a recorder, we had talked a lot about getting recorders before Christmas but we hadn’t been able to find any. Whilst Christmas shopping Naomi had managed to find some, so luckily had got herself one too, we spent the rest of the morning playing Christmas carols and duets on them. In the afternoon the family from the house next door invited us around to theirs to celebrate Christmas with them, so we wondered over. There was an assortment of dishes of meats, rice, noodles and veg out on the table and they insisted on us helping our selves, which we did later in the afternoon. We were in the process of getting some food when one o the children said ‘have you had squirrel before?’, I thought he was joking until he lifted the lid off one of the dishes and I looked to see fried squirrels heads! The family were very welcoming but every member wanted their photo taken with Naomi and I, this wasn’t just the small family who live in the house, this was the whole extended family and all the children, unfortunately we didn’t get a photo of our own!  Later in the afternoon we headed to Secret Recipe, this is a chain restaurant that does western and asian food, amazing cakes and drinks and has free wifi. We had decided that we would eat dinner here, fish and chips seemed an appropriate choice of dinner, and chat to our families who were just getting out of bed!

Catching up with the Family!

The few days between Christmas and New Year were spent having much needed lay ins, watching films and eating our second apple pie with a second tub of ice cream. We also forgot we were meant to be on holiday so did a bit of work and charged all the batteries ready for the next expedition!

So Naomi and I survived our first Christmas away from home and were sufficiently stuffed with homemade apple pie and Secret Recipe's slices of cake, time to get back to work!