Christmas is coming.  You are ambivalent …   Family, Feasting and Fighting.  You might want to consider running away to backpackers in Cape Town and parking your bag at one of the 3 Ashanti premises.

I am rather fond of Christmas.  Decorations go up 1 December and come down 12 days after.  I even buy emergency gifts for those people who embarrass you with some unexpected gift …

However I have from time to time done the I CAN’T STAY AT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR… and have booked a flight and ended up elsewhere.

There are many advantages to traveling  away from ”home” for Christmas.

1.    Its summer, for us. You can come and defrost if you are from the Northern Hemisphere;
2.    We won’t play Michael bloody Buble’ on repeat for the entire season (thank you Mecure Hanoi for the memories it was all I could do to restrain myself from banging my head on the wall).;
3.    We cook an amazing Christmas meal and you don’t have to, and unlike the Christmas feasts at home it won’t cost you an arm and a leg;
4.    If you are suddenly alone in your life due to death, failed relationships etc and feel that there will be nothing worse than being home for the first Christmas having friends and family fret over you.  Take yourself away.  Ashanti is always busy.  There will be people you can talk to that won’t know you and make a fuss you don’t want.  Alternatively if you don’t want to talk to anyone put on your iPod earpieces grab a Savannah and sit out on the deck at Ashanti Gardens watching the table cloth come on and off that great big mountain.  I personally recommend Café del Mar for a broken heart ;
5.    You can drink without being nagged by your mother and great aunt Mary;
6.    You can have fun;
7.    No midnight mass where Grandpa and dad fall asleep and snore making your mother livid that there is no living with her for 2 weeks;
8.    You won’t be sat at the table with the kids, Aunt Bernadette who is a nun so you can’t say that and the other lonely losers in your extended family;
9.    You won’t have to do five Christmases .. I have friends that do, do this every Christmas.. crazy especially as half the family is Jewish!
10.    Your family won’t be there.  You love them but they is always something!  An example – the year my beloved father calculated what he had spent on Mother and I and then calculated what we spent on him and asked for the difference.  Yes he was having a stir but Mother did bite and bite hard.
11.    Your partner’s family won’t be there.  You know what I am talking about …
12.    No expectations;
13.    You can just advise all friends and family you won’t be around for Christmas so don’t buy you anything you are off to a backpackers in Cape Town!

Think about it you could spend a bit on gifts that will become landfill or take yourself (and/or significant other) to the most wondrous city in the world staying at the best backpackers in Cape Town.

Allison Finley-Bisset