Christmas in Hanoi

We are writing the year 2023. To be exact the 22nd of December 2023. Six adventures came together in a secret meeting point in the capital of Vietnam. Their purpose? Unknown. Ordinary people would assume they would just celebrate Christmas together, but they were not ordinary people. Maybe this meeting was a summit of characters with supernatural powers. But maybe we’ll never know.

The last two to arrive at the secret location were Artemis Pastry the goddess of mind power and Black Sesame the ice cool assassin, as their steel scaled dragon arriving from Taiwan was delayed. Entering the hidden lair, they were immediately greeted by their old friends Knickerish Allsorts the Funtime Fondler and Dr Ba Ba Ba-Ah the mighty Tooth Seeer. They were unlikely friends and by the power of probability they would never have met. But they did in a coal heated train crossing distant deserts. But that is a story told elsewhere. As the sun had already set many hours before the arrival of Artemis Pastry and Black Sesame they just put away their trusted fabric skinned animal companions, drank a cup of hot leafy potion and settled down to rest for the night. Another important encounter that night was the meeting of Princess Melongetti of the mm mm tribe. A lovely princess that travelled these parts of the earth with her trusted friend Spoony the flower desert sprite.

Dawn broke clear and bright on the next day. All six adventurers slept long and peacefully and one by one entered the main meeting point of their lair: the kitchen. A grand room, equipped with all means necessary to produce outstanding meals, well almost all means, but frying pans are quite overrated anyways. The group decided to split up and discover the secrets of the surrounding settlement in pairs. The first quest directed Artemis Pastry and Black Sesame to the local supermarket for they had the impending need to bake Christmas cookies. After bringing their newly acquired treasures home they too set out to find the heart of the city. The walk there was a challenge of narrow walkways and speeding cars accompanied by the ever-present wasps and their cry. The sound of the city. These wasps are not the regular small insect but two-wheeled speeders that like the insect are annoying but will only hurt you when you get too close to them. The second quest lead Artemis Pastry and Black Sesame to the St. Joseph Cathedral. They wanted to scout the possible location for the following evening event. With the help of several local workers and google translate they got the necessary intel to plan the next day. Additionally, to the info they left the church with sweets gifted to them by a group of adorable children who talked to them in order to improve their English. After a walk around a nice lake, they met up with the rest of the party for dinner. They feasted on different kinds of tofu, salads and rice. On the way back to their lair they watched a performance of children dancing to surprisingly base-intense versions of Christmas songs. The party ended the day with a few games. Namely 21. A Game where the goal is to make it as difficult as possible to count to 21 and then count to 21. Rule includes something like exchanging, repeating numbers or getting up instead of saying them.

The next morning was the morning of Christmas eve. Black Sesame and Artemis Pastry started the morning quite late with a workout and some breakfast of porridge and extraordinarily good bananas. Knickerish Allsorts and Dr. Ba Ba Ba-ah were out that morning to experience some local traditions and came back around noon. They brought some decorations (fairy lights) which brought some Christmas vibes into their headquarters (on top of the Christmas music). The majority of the party (Knickerish allsorts stayed back to keep watch at headquarters) went to get some noodles and tofu for lunch around the corner. Before engaging into further Christmas activities, Black Sesame and Artemis Pastry called their family. As the two are Germans and there you celebrate Christmas on the 24th, they had to introduce some German Christmas traditions to the other adventurers. The most important is obviously baking Christmas cookies, while making a huge mess and listening to “In der Weihnachtsbäckerei”. And no, you cannot get all the ingredients for Vanillekirpfel or Zimtsterne in Vietnam. But they managed some decent Butterplätzchen and some experimental variations by adding some stuff to the dough (orange & ginger, coconut-vanilla yoghurt, chocolate & spiced-apricot liquor, and Tahini) which also turned out really well. Later that evening they all ventured to St. Joseph cathedral for the Christmas concert which featured some famous Vietnamese singers (none of the knew) and some children performing dances. It brought all of them into a festive mood. Back at the secret layer they cheered with some cocktails, exchanged gifts and played some games.

Christmas day started creative as the whole party had to put together their outfits. This is quite challenging when you live out of an adventurers backpack, but all of them managed to wear something magnificent and fitting to their character. It also became apparent that all of them have supernatural powers. Princess Melongetti can speak to animals and Spoony can make anything appear from her pockets that might be needed. As you have probably guessed from his name Dr. Ba Ba Ba-Ah the mighty Tooth Seeer can see the future of people’s teeth. Black Sesame has a unique set of abilities that are very useful for her profession: she can control the temperature and can poop icecream (mainly on her victims). Knickerish Allsorts on the other hand can use her hair as a helicopter to fly and Artemis Pastry can obviously control minds (though she mainly uses it to make people buy her flip flops). The party put together all their collective abilities to make the Christmas dinner. Meaning that Princess Melongetti and Knickerish Allsorts gave the orders and cooked and the rest mainly chopped some veggies. This Christmas dinner will go into history as the best British Christmas dinner ever cooked in Hanoi. Especially the nut roast and the spicy stir-fried vegetables turned out to be great. The afternoon and night were spend playing various games, eating Christmas cookies and drinking cocktails. There was also an exceptional Christmas pudding that included baked pineapple and flambeed bananas. All in all, the day was maybe a bit unconventional but otherwise a perfect Christmas day.

After three days of celebrations and creating unforgettable memories the party headed different ways again. To reunite at some later point in their adventures.

If you didn’t get anything here. We had a dresscode for Christmas day. It was dress wrong. This was how we all made up our characters. If you don’t recognise our old friends: we celebrated with our friends from the Stans Jefris and River, and their son’s girlfriend Meli and her friend Faye. All of them are as you might have gathered from this blog post really fun and kind people. We had a great time.