A Summer Christmas

My mum told me that my four-year-old nephew gets upset when the sky begins to darken. A day would end, and he has to go to sleep.

I don’t know when I began to notice a similar sentiment I myself have: I see my days clearly marked by dark and light, sleep and wake.

The flat is completely dark when curtains are drawn and lights are turned out. I move slowly and carefully as if a blind man towards the bedroom. My arms are in front of me, feeling for the wall, and my feet avoiding the potted plants on the living room floor. I crawl onto the bed and fall asleep.

In the morning, I wake without an alarm. When I open the balcony door, the roar of Bangkok sweeps in. Another morning, another day.

And then it’s Christmas.

For weeks, there have been Christmas decorations – trees, festoons and poinsettias (though I have never seen poinsettias in the UK during Christmas season) – in shopping malls, restaurants and bars, as well as cheery Christmas music. They are all like smaller noises that blend and fade into the constant roar of this wild urban jungle, the way billboard and TV commercials at Skytrain platforms and in the trains do. They are there, but they are unimportant. How can it be Christmas when it’s so warm and there’s so much sun?

December is actually a cooler month in Bangkok. Until the beginning of it, I was still swimming in the outdoor pool, and then it gets cooler by the day, and it’s almost too cool to swim.

A week before Christmas, a large plastic tree is erected in the lobby of my condo. And the poinsettias, and then the gleaming silvery festoons. On Christmas Eve, the staff at the front desk put on reindeer and elf headbands. Christmas is now right at my doorstep and couldn’t be ignored. But it still doesn’t feel like Christmas to me.

G and I spend the morning of Christmas Eve with my friend Karman, who came from Guangzhou to visit us. The three of us stroll up Song Wat Road and browse in the tourist shops, among wholesalers of rice, noodles and cookware. By the river, we see a pink elephant from the Elephant Parade, with Hello Kitties printed all over its body. The river shimmers in golden sunlight, seemingly stretching towards indefinite light. I didn’t think I would miss the dark days and nights in the UK at this time of the year. Endless summer is as desolate as eternal dark. There is a sense of comfort in winter, the endless cups of teas and rosemary-infused smell of chicken cooking in the oven, in anticipation of spring.

In the evening, we meet with my cousin and her friend at a restaurant in Silom for dinner. They have just visited Chiangmai and are now in Bangkok for the first time. They are curious about the cannabis shops, which are all over the city, but are too timid to go inside one. So I am their guide. I can tell they want to try it, to venture into something outside of what they normally allow themselves. They say very little, except that they are concerned about the consequences they might face when returning home. What if they were tested at the airport? What if people knew?

‘The Red Light District is right here also.’ I might as well show them that too. They had no idea, they say, looking flustered but curious and excited.

The few streets in Patpong where flesh is a service were once bustling but now seem abandoned. Girls line the sidewalks, standing or sitting on plastic stools under huge Japanese-style neon light boxes, but there are hardly any customers. Where have they gone to? Nana?

My cousin and her friend walk nervously, holding onto each other. ‘We are frightened,’ they say, 'We’ve never seen anything like this.’

But frightened of what? They don’t tell me. They say little. There’s always so much unsaid.

On Christmas Day, G, Karman and I spend the afternoon looking at art at the Bangkok Biennale, which is not very good, but nonetheless, we have a good time.

For Christmas dinner, we have no tree at home, and the food we make is no different from the kind of food we usually make in Bangkok: a river bass, stir-fried loofah, morning glories, and minced pork with sweet basil. Afterwards, I go to the 7-Eleven and buy toast for the next morning’s breakfast. There, I run into a young couple from my building, whom I thought were Russians.

When I see them again in the lift and when she says hi, I ask, ’It doesn’t feel like Christmas here, does it?’

‘No,’ she answers in a light tone.

The last time I saw them they were in the market in the morning. Before that, another day, by the pool, where I was doing morning yoga and she was moving between the steam room and the pool with a towel wrapped around her hair. How idle does one have to be to spend a weekday morning in a steam room? I thought.

She asks me what I did for Christmas. ‘Nothing, really,’ I say, ‘we made dinner, but not even Christmas food.’

‘We cooked, too,’ she says, ‘some food from home.’

Where is home? I want to ask, but I don’t.

Then she says, ‘Food from Ukraine.’

‘So you are from Ukraine?’

‘Yes.’

I want to say more, but not sure what.

The lift opens on their floor. ‘Merry Christmas,’ I say, before the door closes.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she says.

He’s not the sunglasses that he wears all the time. But he hasn’t said anything.