Christmas with the Tan family

Neither of us have ever spent Christmas time away from away from our homes before; consequently, we’ve never spent a Christmas together either! We’d always said that the first Christmas together would have to be somewhere we could invite both families - neither Manchester nor Washington DC - so it would be fair! As it happened, we ended up in Malaysia for our first ever Christmas together - not exactly convenient for either family!

My very good friend Sara-Sam who I was at uni with in both York and Lausanne and who is from Malaysia kindly invited us to spend Christmas with her family. This was such an amazing offer - we had known when we booked the ‘big adventure’ that Christmas would start the homesickness alarms and our worst nightmare was to be stuck in a dirty hostel somewhere celebrating just the two of us somewhere we didn’t know!

The Tan family really looked after us. We were made to feel so welcome - a real part of the family - and we were certainly fattened up! Sara’s parents wanted to make sure that we had tried every type of Malaysian cuisine possible and we were taken for some incredible meals during our stay. We were introduced to some new fruits too, my favourite being Mangostines (spelling, Sara???!).

Christmas day with the Tans involved a HUGE lunch of both turkey and beef, roast vegetables, stuffing, cauliflower cheese, and even more vegetables.

Chris introduced to the extended Tan family a Danish game he plays with his family at Christmas which involved dice and a lot of little presents - we had great fun with this!

After our THREE deserts - I told you we were being fattened up! - of Christmas pud, choccy cake and apple pie, we were taken out for even more food for dinner! We went to a local Indian place and sampled some of their specialities even though our stomachs were fit to burst!

Speaking to both of our families using Skype was also amazing! We even shared the present opening at home via video link! Chris and I opened the packages that had arrived for us from Manchester while on Skype to my family and we watched my mum, dad, grandma and little bro opening presents we’d sent from Vietnam and India! Such fun! Until Dad popped open the Champagne and declared how much his wallet preferred that we were sharing this moment via video link and not in the same room!

We had a great Christmas with the Tans and would like to thank them all so much for making us feel at home, feeding us with such wonderful food and for their complete kindness and generosity!