September is still the rainy season in Thailand. You can expect the grand, towering thunder clouds to reach high into the blue sky in most parts of the country, and a torrential downpour later in the afternoon or evening many days. Call me odd you must (although it's an already proven fact) but I honestly enjoy a good thunder and lightning show, as long as I don't have to be outdoors and up within striking distance. As Jimi Hendrix sang long ago: "Lay back and groove on a rainy day."
Two wonderful things about the rains there this time of year: unless there's a typhoon coming through they tend to be shorter bursts of 15 to 45 minutes duration, and although they can be a bother if you're stranded out somewhere without an umbrella (although I prefer the colloquial term bumbershoot) they are often a dramatic demonstration of Nature's power.
If you haven't read the May post about The Approaching Storm I'll refer you to it now. In it you'll find a better description of rain storms in words, but if a picture's worth a thousand of them there's a clip up top today of an afternoon downpour I took from my room on the back side of the Om Yim Lodge last year.
Another good example of a real rain is this clip I saw today, which I've been told was taken in Pattaya (thanks to the file owner for that). All it's missing is the thunder and lightning!
The streets fill in a matter of minutes and traffic slows as visibility drops dramatically. Pedestrians duck for cover or begin to scurry faster to their destinations, risking being truly soaked to the skin before they get there. The poor souls on motocy slice their way through the rivers on the streets, almost blinded by the drops hammering their face shields.
Here's another clip (not mine) of an extremely brave - or completely nuts - farang, riding in a tuk tuk in Bangkok. Something I'd only try if my insurance were paid up and/or I'd lived long enough being able to walk on my own!
From INside, though, it's great fun to watch, and I'd love to be there to see it.
2 comments:
Sensational Bao Bao. I have been in Thailand in September twice now and I love the rain. The first time I experienced it was a surprise for me as the whether went from fine to pouring in about 2 minutes. But I loved the freshness and chaos that the rain brought.
On the second day of storms we were in a soup cafe which began to get flooded even though it was about 18 inches above the road which had become a fast-flowing stream. As the cars drove throught, a huge wave encroached on the footpath and flowed into the cafe and other buildings. One guy in our party (who was later to become my boyfriend) got up from his lunch to help the shopkeeper build a temporary barrier to reduce the inundation inside the shop. "Thai help Thai" was his simple summation of what he did.
As for the thunder and lightening - I absolutely love it. The louder and brighter the flashes, the more pleasure it brings me so Bao Bao - I must be as odd as you hey?
Haha...the Tuk Tuk ride clip is terrific. This post makes me want to visit Thailand in the rainy season. So far I've only visited in late November and December. I think I've missed something.
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