Summary
The very first Christmas in the tropics. Christmas in Bali. Unforgettable memories, great people, white elephant gift exchange.
I was at a Christmas party in Bali on December 25th. It was my first tropical Christmas.
We were with 50 other people in a beautiful villa. With lots of food, a white elephant gift exchange, an ugly Christmas T-shirt contest, a fire ceremony, and lots of good conversation.
An unforgettable memory.
The Christmas menu
The invitation was for everyone to bring something they would like to eat or drink. We wrote down on a list beforehand who would prepare what, to prevent us from having 10 plates of rice with 3 bowls of potatoes and 5 chocolate cakes.
This resulted in a feast that we can most often read about in fairy tales.
There was everything that our eyes and mouths could desire: savory, sweet, local and international, fruit, salad, vegetarian and meat dishes. No one went hungry. Not thirsty either, but – as a Hungarian, I am not used to this – the evening was not about drinking alcohol. There was – of course – but those who drank did so in moderation. The main role was played by the sober and cheerful shared experience.
One half of my contribution was the spring rolls that I ordered from Graben, straight to the villa. The other was the help that I was able to give the host. I helped to skin and gut the fish, just like last time.
At the end of the party – just like last time – I was the only guest who stayed and helped clean up. There was enough food for a few days at the end of the party. I even received a special Christmas present from the host:
“Steve, you are the one we can always count on.”
Ugly Christmas T-shirt Contest
The winner of this competition can be the happy owner of a 90-minute massage and a 100 EUR discount on the next Nomad Cruise ticket. Since the founder of Nomad Cruise was also celebrating with us, when the host told us that the discount was 100 EUR, he immediately increased it to 200 EUR.
So it was worth preparing for this competition!
I was exceptionally in the shops looking for a Christmas T-shirt, and I tried to find a place to print custom T-shirts, but I was unsuccessful.
I already suspected that I would not be the lucky one in Bali.
My experiences went according to the expected scenario. LOL. Wherever I tried to buy a Christmas T-shirt at all – not an ugly one, just a simple Christmas-themed one – the same thing almost always happened.
- We don’t have a Christmas T-shirt, but we do have a Bali-themed one.
- We don’t have a T-shirt like that, but we do have shorts.
- I can’t give you that, but there are other things, like wooden plates.
My favorite was the girl who listened to me, then said that it wasn’t Christmas, but at least it was red, and took out a red Puma T-shirt.
An American girl was wearing the T-shirt she had prepared for this competition all evening. For a long time, it seemed that she was the only competitor. Then, as the competition began, another player appeared, in a reindeer sweatshirt.
The competition was decided between the two of them. The American girl’s T-shirt, sewn and sequined by herself, was a work of art. Santa Claus was sprawled out in a gin glass, drinking something, I think this was a great idea and the work invested in it was obvious.
Before the vote, the other lady made a very kind gesture: she said that even without voting, she thought that the other competitor was the winner, because he clearly did more for this competition than she did.
I really like such human moments.
The fireworks
Among the gifts, a huge package of fireworks was very popular. After the gift-giving and the polo competition, a few guys ended their existence.
At that time, a few of us were talking in a small garden bench. Apparently, we painted the devil on the wall, because when the rockets started flying and exploding, we started talking about how much we didn’t like it, because we thought it was a dangerous thing.
Shortly after, the last charge of one of the rockets chose to explode instead of flying. This independence ended happily in the end.
In fact, the hand that was holding the rocket caught the culprit about 10 centimeters below the explosion. That way, we didn’t have to reduce the number of available limbs with one hand.
It was also lucky that although this explosion hit its holder in the head, no injuries occurred, just a fright.
It was a minor experience for me that one of the sparks was about to head towards me, but stopped halfway. The ladies sitting next to me did not remain calm, they showed me what a panicked escape is.
Finally, we were lucky that the song of the evening was not “Smoke on the water”. The pool is next to the small garden seating area, so water was a given.
And the smoke appeared a good fifteen minutes later, when we noticed that the bamboo roof of the terrace was smoking. One of the sparks had rested there. Fortunately, there was a watering hose and an expired powder extinguisher, with the use of which the aforementioned song – fortunately – did not become the main character of the evening.
I was an outsider, because the temporary firefighting team, which was formed with rapid steps, immediately gained its full strength. The seriousness of the situation was somewhat mitigated by the – I think usual in such situations – charm born of amateurism, as everyone tried to do their best.
The improvised fire extinguishing had everything: a one and a half liter soda bottle, an expired powder extinguisher, good intentions and a lot of improvisation. The whole thing had a special, amateur charm.
We survived the adventure and fortunately nothing happened.
I hope everyone involved learned the lesson.
White Elephant Gift Exchange
For me, this was the real holiday.
I had never heard of this game before, so – in retrospect – I did a little research on what it was.
White Elephant Gift Exchange is a gift-giving game played mainly at Christmas, where the value of the gift is not the point, but the surprise, humor and the dynamic between each other. This is exactly how I experienced it.
The expression comes from Asia. It is no coincidence that I came across it here. According to legend, the white elephant was a sacred animal, it could not be worked with. However, it was expensive to feed. If the king gave someone a white elephant, it was often a punishment, not a reward.
This is where the metaphor comes from: a gift that is spectacular, but useless or burdensome. This idea lives on in the Christmas game too – just for laughs.
Basic rules (classic version)
- Everyone brings a wrapped gift
- with a pre-agreed value limit (e.g. 15–25 USD)
- can be funny, strange, practical or completely random
- Raffle: everyone draws a number.
- The first player opens a gift and keeps it.
- The next player can choose
- either to open a new gift
- or to steal a previously opened one.
- If your gift is stolen
- you can immediately choose:
- to open a new one
- or to steal from someone else
- A gift can usually be stolen a maximum of 2–3 times, so that there is no endless loop.
- The game ends when the last gift is opened.
We had three more rules:
- There were a few “blind steal” options, when you could steal a gift from someone while they were holding it but hadn’t opened it yet.
- There was a single “steal anything” option, reserved for the last player.
- The gift had to arrive wrapped so that no one could tell what it was. But before you chose, you could pick it up, shake it, and weigh it.
I had never heard of it before, so I never participated in such a game, but it would be my favorite from now on.
There was a lot of laughter. Lots of fake or real disappointed faces, the thefts didn’t happen by chance. There were some sentences that were funny, for example, when one of the girls started talking about her roommate after one of the thefts as “my ex-girlfriend” who stole what I stole before.
There were obviously popular gifts, quite a few massages, these changed hands several times. There was the fireworks, which were also stolen several times from each other.
This game provided a long and self-forgetful entertainment for the 35 people who brought gifts and also for those who just watched because they did not want to participate in it.
I did not want to steal, I knew this in advance and decided. I chose my gift from the table with my eyes closed. I received a baseball cap with a Balinese figure as a gift, accompanied by a 70% cocoa chocolate from Fiji.
However, the real gift – again – was not for me.
I was worried about my own gift contribution. I am not a good gift-picking person.
Of course, I asked the AI what would be a suitable gift for the occasion. In fact, I asked 4 AI models.
Almost all of them said the same thing, it was funny to see that – probably – other people asked and chose what the models said. I did not accept their suggestion.
On the 23rd, I walked around the neighborhood for a few hours, waiting for something to call me to find what I wanted to give. I looked at dozens of small shops, and then I tried it in a large shopping center.
A toy store gave me the strongest signal: come on!
Here I felt that the LEGO lucky bamboo puzzle would be the right one. Luckily, I was able to buy it with a Christmas discount, so I got a gift of just the right value, and one of the salesmen wrapped it very nicely.
The bamboo was among the first unwrapped gifts of the gift-giving to one of the guys with whom I participated in the summer Nomad Cruise.
He was so happy about it! He hugged it to him, his eyes were shining, as mine secretly were. It felt so good that this gift had reached someone like that.
Not long after, it was stolen from the guy, he played it off, he wouldn’t give it back, he played the role of suffering very well.
At the end of the gift-giving, we witnessed another incredibly kind act: the guy who stole the LEGO returned it to its original owner. He said he only stole it as a joke, he had no intention of keeping it. The theft was part of the game, and he did it with the intention that if he kept it, he would give it back.
Then – a little later – after a few aside conversations, I suddenly saw a wonderful scene.
Four of them knelt around the gift table. And together they put together the lucky bamboo. They played with it for a long time, laughed, brainstormed, shared the work among themselves. And their eyes shone.
Many of us just stood around them and watched them while we talked. I was proud of myself and of this gift choice.
This lucky bamboo was a great experience for all of us that evening. But – fortunately – only one among many.
And I am quietly but very grateful for this evening full of experiences.Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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Short introduction