Today was also Christmas Eve – and the hotel had organized a Christmas Eve Gala Dinner – and really put an effort into it. The tables were arranged around the pool, nicely decorated, candles floating in the water, a small stage set up and a massive buffet prepared (with a great selection of food and live barbecue); there was even a guy in a Santa Claus costume. Things seemed perfect – until the entertainment started …

Entertainment seemed to consist of a weird combination of speeches, strange (at least from a Western perspective) games and karaoke. Things started to get strange straight after the speech of the hotel manager (most guests still eating at this point) – when they were looking for volunteers for the first game (which had a karaoke feeling to it, though – I think, no one really fully understood, what the game was about). Short to say – no volunteers could be found, so things moved on to the next speech and a draw. There were also no volunteers for the following set of singing – so now the hotel staff had to take it and we witnessed the various hotel departments come to stage.

Another game was on thereafter … kind of the Vietnamese version of a Piñata. I volunteered and got rewarded with fridge magnets and glitter down to my underwear (the Vietnamese Piñata is filled with glitter – and I ran straight into the glitter shower after I had hit the thing). More singing was to come after the game and the tables started to empty. We were some of the last ones to leave.

Lessons learned:

• culture shock can be two ways … here we had a Western holiday (and one which traditionally is one of the more contemplative ones) – and the Vietnamese concept of celebration clashing. For the Westerners the program simply did not fit the occasion (this would have been perfect for a New Year’s Eve party after dinner), while our Vietnamese hosts could not understand that we would not volunteer for some fun on this happy day … mutual culture shock …
• the folks from accounting actually could sing – house keeping though would easily go through as torture per the Geneva conventions.

Looking back – it was actually a fun evening – the food was great and – while the show may have been unexpected, it was still entertaining – so, what more to ask for!?