Christmas Eve! On the beach?? – Day 113 – Dec 24, 2025

We wake up on Christmas Eve morning, have a good breakfast of sourdough and eggs, and we all feel it. It’s Christmas, the anticipation is building, and we just have to get through the day for the magic to start! Well it’s Christmas, and both in Norway and at our house in Tecumseh, today is our main dinner that we host. Traditionally we spend the day in the kitchen, the day is all about good food and preparing for guests. 5pm onwards, our house is full and loud and chaotic and wonderful.

The relaxing tempo, peace and quiet here is quite the contrast! If we are having a different holiday, I want it to be as different as it can possibly get, so I want to go walk on the beach. We leave the condo, aiming for the beach behind Téa’s birthday restaurant. We leave the resort through the back gate, and head down towards the ocean and find… not a beach.

We go back up to the condo, repack to bring all the waters, change shoes and grab a Grab to go to Hua Hin beach. We’ve actually never been. It’s an excursion and a half, further than the furthest of our regular malls, and then the Grab lets us off when cars have to stop and only motorcycles can continue. We go down the alley with vendors selling flip flops, alcohol, beach towels and everything inbetween, until we reach the beach. The beach is narrow, it is high tide here too, of course, but there’s a beach!

My toes are happy to be back in the sand, and the ocean really isn’t that cold when it’s warm all day and all night. I usually joke that if you ever see a person, socks and shoes in hand, with their toes in the sand when you think it’s too cold, it has to be a Norwegian! We don’t have sand in Norway, just jagged rocks leading out to the freezing cold ocean. Except up north, where it’s too cold to play in the sand, that’s where the beautiful beaches are.

My family… not so much. Ouch, a shell. Ouch, the sand is hot. Eeeek, the waves make me sink half a centimetre into the sand. It’s too bright. It’s too hot. It’s too sandy. It’s too beachy. It’s too perfect. I make them pose for a photo:

So… our beach adventure didn’t last long. There’s a genius foot shower station at the entrance stairs to the beach, so we rinse our feet and make the long trek through all the vendors out to the road. We have lots of options of tuktuk taxis waiting, we can walk out to the main road where the tuktuk buses run, or we can book a Grab or Bolt to come pick us up. We walk to a shaded spot and book a car to come get us.

The car drops us off at Market Village, we’re all ready for a snack by now. We’re here so early, the mall isn’t even open yet! It’s 10.10am and the mall opens at 10.30am. This is the only reason we end up going inside Burger King for a snack, otherwise we wouldn’t have set foot in there. Téa wants chicken nuggets, Maylin wants fries. Seeing as Joe already tried the corn and taro fried pie on our first night in Bangkok, I order the second most unknown thing on the menu: Pattongo with condensed milk dipping sauce.

Thai pattongo turn out to be baby Chinese donuts, these but about 30cm long is what is served as a salty crunchy side to congee in Hong Kong! They are delicious, and the tiny size means they’re the perfect little treat. 5 in the bag means Joe and I both get two, Maylin takes the 5th while Téa prefers her nuggets over trying new things some days.

Finally the mall opens (not really words I thought I would write about Christmas Eve), and we head inside. Walking by the relatively empty massage chair vendor in the middle of the mall, there are the vibration disks just sitting there, vibrating and quietly screaming at us to come try it out. I wish I could add a video on here (but we’d run out of space for pictures with just one video of Maylin shaking and giggling), but you’ll have to make due with the photo. She’s having a blast! (So did I, although made me feel as if I had just come off a boat when I stepped off!)

It’s almost time for Santa to arrive, and of course we have most everything ready for his arrival. After watching the movie Noelle last night, who knows, maybe Santa is a she this year? (Super cute and funny movie, highly recommended!) But we still have one or two more things to pick up, and our journey through the mall brings us to Daiso, where Maylin begs to try on this hat. She pulled it down to her chin and asked me to take her picture, which I refused to do unless I could see her face. So she may not look happy, but that’s because of mom, not this amazing hat.

Our last stop (or so we think) is the grocery store. We have to get that delicious pork belly that we saw yesterday, even though that was Bluport and this is Village Market. The girls and I browse the shelves while Joe goes on a pork hunt.

Joe has no luck. He decides to go back to Bluport and the grocery store there, which is great because I have had an idea and need to buy something behind his back. As soon as I say “who wants to go with dad to Bluport”, Téa jumps at the chance to spend some time with Joe. Which is also great for Maylin, because ever since Téa had that amazing DIY ice cream experience at Swensen’s, she’s wanted her very own ice cream afternoon with only mommy. So that’s what we do! Joe and Téa head across the street to the tuktuk bus, and Maylin and I sit down for ice cream!

Ice cream was delicious, of course, and afterwards I head for the market in the middle of the mall. Maylin buys a gift for Téa and a twin keychain for herself. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? To Maylin, it all has to be equal, and Téa is the same way too. You’d think they were twins more than sisters some days! But, sad to say, the market does not have what I am looking for for Joe. So we head to the basement.

The basement has “The Travel Store”, so we head there. Joe left his water bottle (brand new, too) on the table where we ate those horrible sandwiches back at Pearson airport in Toronto before we even left the country. He’s travelled sans permanent water bottle since then, sharing mine or reusing a single use plastic one. So today, he gets a new bottle! Or rather, tomorrow.

All missions accomplished, Maylin and I head to the second floor where the walkway to the other side of the busy main road is. They have decorated this walkway so beautifully, Maylin asks to take a picture:

We call Joe and Téa while we wait for the tuktuk bus, and they have just arrived home. There was not a speck of pork belly to be found in the entire Bluport mall, so our Christmas Eve menu has pivoted from our usual pork belly with crispy skin to being pork hock with crispy skin. Same same, right?

When Maylin and I get home, the girls and I go down to the pool to get some sun and water in for the day. Afterwards, we shower while Joe preps dinner. When I’m ready, I walk up the street to the mango sticky rice stall across from Tamarind market, the lady with the heart shaped boxes and best value so far. The streets are quiet, it’s after 5pm on Christmas Eve, and all the restaurants are open as usual.

Thailand is majority Buddhist, and so Christmas is not a holiday. Everywhere is decorated for the holidays, as there are so many foreigners here, but it’s all business as usual. All the big hotels and all the biggest restaurants have special menus and events going on tonight, but our little family of four is having our Thai version of a Norwegian Christmas Eve, at home.

We watch some more Christmas movies, and I’m “too busy blogging” to put the kids to bed, because the faster we can close their bedroom door, the faster we can set up Santa’s gifts and stockings! We are tiptoeing around the living room, and freeze at every noise, hoping they’re not waking up. I then shoo Joe into our bedroom and close the door so I can wrap his stuff.

When all is set, I finally head to bed. How Joe sneaks out to put my gift under the tree, I will never know. Maybe it’s Christmas magic? (He’s honestly such a good magician.)