Diving into Christmas and My Birthday

Christmas day

This isn’t our first Christmas away from home, but it was my first ever Christmas under the sun. Such a different experience, it wasn’t really like Christmas at all, but that could have a lot to do with the absence of hordes of people, family and any Christmas memorabilia. We were beginning to think the festive season was to be overlooked until Christmas Eve. They can’t really be expected to deck the halls with bells of holly, as 70% of the population are Buddhist, with only 6% being Christian- and a local woman told me most of those live around Colombo. But what the tourist wants, the tourist gets, so on Christmas Eve great activity could be observed in all the restaurants as trees were decorated, tinsel hung and blackboards advertised Christmas dinner.

My previous impression of a beach Christmas; given to me no doubt from friends who had worked in Australia for a year, was of a big party on the beach with lots of food and drink, a bonfire and good music. This wasn’t the case in Hikkaduwa, it was just eerie quite! One of the bigger hotels had organised a dinner dance event and I guess a lot of the tourists went to that, otherwise the beach was pretty much empty, along with the bars and restaurants! So it was a quite, but fun/romantic Christmas for us, we had a morning swim (swimming on Christmas morning, mental!) lazily had our breakfast at a table right on the beach, pursued that with a leisurely walk along the water and rented some body boards to try our luck on the waves.

Those things are fun! You can gather some serious speed if you catch the wave correctly, which I managed to do some of the time! Mal also tried some surfing, having taken a lesson at home with his brothers one summer. He realised he’d forgotten a lot of what he’d learned and took a hammering from the waves to begin with, but a couple of days later he was looking better. I gave it a whirl, and nearly drowned! I think I’d rather a few lessons before trying that again. It doesn’t look easy and it definitely isn’t, but I imagine it’s worth the effort; it would be some adrenalin rush to ride a big wave! We watched a stunning sunset, had a lovely diner and later skyped home to feel some good old Irish Christmas cheer. It felt like pass the parcel where we, via the phone, were the parcel being passed from mother to sister to brother to aunt to cousin to wish and be wished a very merry Christmas. Such activity bursting through the receiver made us nostalgic for home, we did feel the absence, and would have loved to have transported ourselves home for the day, or better yet, have everybody come here for Christmas – ah if only we were rich! But as my auntie Dympna said, we have the rest of our lives ahead of us, and how many Christmases will we ever have alone, just the two of us in such a special place?
Although it also made us realise that we’ll have some difficulty for future Christmases trying to divide our time, between the two families!


My Birthday

The next morning I was awoken to my husband’s sweet voice singing happy birthday holding a yummy lit chocolate cake in his hands. Thankfully he didn’t include all twenty nine candles; nobody needs to be reminded of that!

We decided the cake made a perfect breakfast, so ate that in bed with a big pot of tea. Delicious. Calories don’t count on your birthday, or at Christmas, or on holidays, or honeymoon for that matter, and considering we’re away for a year, and so far seem to have built up a resistance to bacteria (damn that was my slim fast plan) I wonder will you recognize me when I return home?!
Mal had a whole day’s surprise birthday activities planned for us. First it was a boat dive. We had arranged to start our advanced open water dive course on the 28th so I was prepared to go diving, but it was a very welcome surprise that we would be going today. Oh it was fantastic diving again; we hadn’t been in nearly two years so the dive master also took it as an opportunity to refresh our skills before starting the course. Amazingly, it’s like riding a bike, you never forget- but actually just for the record, it’s nothing like riding a bike, the only thing they have in common is that you rarely touch the ground with your feet!

After we finished the dive and returned to terra firma Mal whisked us away to the next activity; an afternoon at an Ayurveda clinic! First we were checked over by the doctor and he recommended to the therapists which oils to use for our therapeutic massages. Sri Lankan Ayurveda is a system of medicine using oils, herbs and massage, it maintains that the five elements (earth, air, ether, water and light) are linked to the five senses and shape your individual life force, thus Ayurvedic treatment restores your balances giving you good health. Like Chinese medicine, this restoration takes a proper commitment of weeks or months to see any positive results. But, like all things in a tourist resort, even the treatments have been adapted to suit the market. I doubt if there really is much of a medicinal benefit in having a single massage, it’s more for relaxation and giving the time restraints for the usual two week holiday, this is all the clientele are looking for. Perhaps the knowledge that it is an Ayurvedic massage, rather than a ‘regular’ treatment is the placebo needed. I don’t doubt the benefits of Ayurveda and would love to have the money (as we have the time!) to explore the treatments extensively.

Anyway, our afternoon session started with a full oil body massage, next a wonderful oil head massage, interjected with some herbal medicine to drink and followed with a herbal steam bath. I didn’t want the session to end! Two hours of heaven. We were told to let the oil work it’s magic for the rest of the evening, and we were given special Ayurvedic tea to finish the session. We came out feeling and (with all the oil) looking freshly birthed.

Mal confided that he thought the massage a little personal. We Irish are a little shy when it comes to nakedness, but in Asia it’s different. I’m not sure about spa treatments at home, never having the money to have any there, but on this side of the world nakedness is not a problem. In Korea I often went to the spa, and there all women must bathe naked. You are not allowed to wear swimwear while bathing. It’s actually very liberating, I think it’s wonderful that mother, daughter and granddaughters can all bathe together; it’s also a lovely day out to go with your girlfriends and spend the day soaking and chatting (men and women are segregated). I found that it helps dispel any body issues you may have as everybody’s flaws are on display and nobody cares. These spas are huge with lots of different baths of many herbal, fruity and medicinal infusions. So when my (female) therapist told me to take off my bikini top and lie down I didn’t have a problem with it.
Mal’s (male) therapist told him to take off his shorts and lie on the table, confirming with him that he heard correctly Mal did just that and he said the therapist was quick to cover his privates with a mini towel. As his legs and thighs were worked on, Mal felt a little uneasy, especially as the towel kept falling off. We couldn’t help but laugh when we came to the conclusion that perhaps the masseuse has meant for Mal to take off his shorts - not his underwear, but Mal was in his swimming shorts and had nothing on underneath. Perhaps the therapist was as surprised as Mal at having him naked on his table! He must have taught us Europeans very liberal!

We lunched on fresh juice and avocado salad, actually that was just me, Mal had something fishy, and strolled back ‘home’. Later we had a lovely meal with a bottle of wine (again I think that might have been all me, with Mal opting for beer), and rang home this time to receive some birthday cheer – and perhaps I rubbed it in a little, gushing about the wonderful day we had had and about my wonderful husband! Malachy certainly pulled out all the stops this year, our first being married, you know what, I’m actually looking forward to being thirty!