For the Love of God, Stop Raining!

I have lived in Asia for 6 years now, I am well used to the monsoon season, but this year it definitely seems worse. I have never used my bike cape so much, have never got stuck in bars so often (my excuse and I’m sticking to it) and never arrived home drenched on as many occasions as this year. Is it just me, or is this wet season going on forever?

I am from Manchester, a city known for constant rain. Whilst this is sometimes exaggerated for comedic affect, it is worth bearing in mind that the constant wet weather was the very reason that Manchester became the centre of Britain’s textile industry for over 100 years. Spinning and weaving machines require a damp environment, to stop the weft snapping. Therefore, to say that I am used to crap weather, would be something of an understatement; this is though, terrible. Day after day we start off with glorious sunshine, but by the middle of the afternoon, it has gone tits up and the storm clouds are rolling in.

I just spent a week in Thailand and whilst it rained, it was nowhere near as bad as Saigon. It tends to hammer it down for an hour or so then brighten up and is, in fact, quite a pleasant way of freshening the air up. In fact when I departed to return home, I left Bangkok in glorious sunshine, but by the time we got to Saigon, the weather was so bad that the plane couldn’t even land. Four and a half hours later and a diversion to Nha Trang, we finally touched down. Here it turns bad and stays bad. As I write this, it has been raining for about 3 hours and whilst not heavy at the moment is more than enough to get me wet on my twenty minute ride home, later.

The floods are something else as we all know. I do find the Asian way of ignoring a foot deep flood both intriguing and admirable. Six inches of water in the West and it’s a news item, I don’t think it makes the news here until people’s hats start floating.

Hopefully soon, the weather will change and the dry season will finally arrive. It just cannot come soon enough for me. Four months of dry hot weather will be more than enough to take me up to when I have to return to England for a longer than normal visit next Spring. So come on, please start now and make that four months, five!