I think maybe I talk about this a bit too much but if you lived through what my environment is for the past several years as a Westerner, I think you might be better able to understand why I am so enthusiastic when I wake up and it is only around 20 degrees outside in the morning with the peak high temp suggested to be around 24.
It can be brutally hot here in Vietnam and the rest of SE Asia, and while I love almost every other aspect of life here in this country, I really dislike the time of year where it becomes so terribly hot that any time of day where the sun is out, other than perhaps the first hour after dawn, is basically unusable for me outdoors.
So I was delighted today when I woke up and heard my back door clattering because of wind and went out onto my balcony and saw this in the sky
It just occurred to me that the treeline that I accidentally put in the snap here makes it appear as though I live in some sort of park area with some nature in it. Trust me, I do not. Da Nang makes a focus of having trees lining most of the streets and I am very grateful for that. If it wasn't for these trees I believe we wouldn't have any plants outside of ones in pots that people mostly use not for beautification, but instead to illegally block the sidewalk and expand their property a bit.
Well while a lot of my friends are lamenting that the sky is cloudy and almost zero sun is getting though, I am up here in my living room with the windows open and just loving life right now.
It is around 9am and the temperature is 22 degrees (72 degrees F) and honestly, in my mind, this is the absolute perfect temperature and if I could find a place in the world where it was this temperature every single day I would investigate figuring out how I can possibly live there.
Yesterday, we got a glimpse of what is definitely going to happen in that I couldn't keep my doors open and needed to have the air con on all day long. Otherwise I would have been sweating even though I am sitting still in my living room.
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Here's a fun graphic of what you can expect from the temp in Da Nang on a yearly basis. As you can tell, the temp that I woke up to today is already well below the average for April and you also need to keep in mind that this blue line is referring to the 24 hours temp, as in when the sun has already gone down. So for us to be below that level when it is already daytime, is pretty unusual.
The thing is, this is not an anomaly of the month as most of the month has been overcast and cool.
I suppose if you were on holiday and seeking the sun this might irritate you a bit but since the visitors here are mostly Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, those folks are for the most part, not seeking to get a tan at all.
I do have some Norwegian friends who live in Da Nang during their winter that are kind of upset that they are going to be returning to their home country in a week or so without a tan. Me, I am willing to sacrifice their happiness for my own comfort.
Normally, the cooler temps here are accompanied with a lot of rain, as you can also see in the above graph. April is trationally one of the driest months of the year and we have only had a few drops of rain the entire month. Yet, we still have clouds that look like they are threatening rain but just never drop any.
I don't know anything about meteorology, but whatever is making this happen, is very welcome in my world.