Wild Weather

I’m not sure how much Thai news makes the pages of the Farang papers but I’ll give you a quick little update. The most recent headline is that the UDD (Red Shirts) is up to their old tricks again, but I’ll get to that later. What was strange and totally unexpected was the weather in Thailand this past month. Around the same time as the earthquake in Japan and the ‘supermoon’, the temperature here plummeted and it started to rain regularly. Just to be clear, Thailand has three seasons: Hot, Cold, and Rainy. We were right in the middle of hot season and it was anything but. I know lows of 15c are far from bone-chilling and I’m not asking for your pity (in fact I loved it) I’m just saying it was bizarre. It would be like having the coldest day of the year in late June. The weird weather struck the whole country too. Heavy rains led to devastating flooding in the south that they’re still recovering from. Andrew had a friend from there visiting when it all went down and she’s still here ‘cause her home is drying out. And while the south had too much water, there was also terrible drought up north. Weird times. The Bangkok weather has since returned to normal and the past couple days have been full of the oppressive heat and humidity that I associate with mid-April. That’s great news because we’re rapidly coming up on Songkran!! The greatest holiday on the planet!! Songkran is the celebration of the Thai New Year and consists of a three-day nation wide water fight. I’m heading up to Chiang Mai tonight to spend the holiday there and come home next week. I’ll give you all the details of my adventure then. The Red Shirts are once again holding giant rallies in the city. As far as I can tell they’re just holding them to commemorate those killed last time they had a giant rally in Bangkok. No one knows whether they’ll be in-and-out or if it’ll drag on as long as it did last time. I don’t think we’ll see anything close to as bad as the violence from last May but you never know. For now, just know that I’m safe and having fun in Chiang Mai for the next several days.

Happy New Year!

much love,
j