Vietnam. The land of freedom that I never thought I would find in a place that is known for being communist. This is a wonderful place, really, if you can find a way of making some money here. For people like me who are digital nomads, this place is a wonderland that has a few downsides. One of them is the fact that the "summer" as most of you probably know it is absolutely painful here. I'll do my best to explain this in American as well as "rest of the world" units.
From about June until nearly November, we have the "summer" here and while I remember summer as being a time of extreme joy as a child, it is quite oppressive here in this land. The heat and humidity makes doing almost anything outside of an air conditioned environment an exercise in discomfort.
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The other day I was up early because of a class I had to teach to a couple of students that want to learn English before going to work that live in Japan, which is a few hours ahead of us on the time zones. It was reasonably cool when I woke up, but as the lessons started to wrap up around 7am, I noticed that the temperature was already changing dramatically.
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When that sun comes over the horizon in the East, I don't think that the streets have even fully cooled off from the previous day. Our high levels of humidity see to it that this remains the case. If you were out of the city or just out of a metro area, perhaps it would be different but here in the concrete-covered area that I live in, nothing ever gets a chance to fully cool down.
When I woke up it was already 80 degrees F (26 degrees C) but by the time my lessons were over, it was approaching 90 degrees (32 degrees C). I don't normally go back to sleep after these things and instead try to get a jump on my day but by the time it was nearly 10am, it was already 100 degrees F (38 degrees C) outside. I had no choice but to close my balcony doors and turn on the air con at this juncture. By 1pm it stayed at around 100 degrees F, but the "real feel" or "heat index" made it 110-115 degrees F ( 46 degrees C). This, to me and most of the human race, is an unbearable temperature. You can cook food on the pavement and because I was a little upset to see my friend walking his dog I took my shoes off for a moment to walk on the tarmac at around 2pm when I was walking to a minimart and almost immediately suffered burns on my feet. I spoke to my friend about this later and how he really shouldn't be walking his dog during that time.
The thing that makes it so unbearable here isn't necessarily just the intense heat, but also the relentless humidity. Because of the high humidity the heat just lingers long after the sun has gone down. In other places you might be feeling as though you can safely go and do stuff outside after say, 7 or 8 pm but NOT HERE! Between the street that is essentially charcoal at this point and the lingering humidity that holds the day's heat, it stays oppressively hot well into the night.
It was last night that I decided to walk to a nearby restaurant that has burritos and I was going to eat in but since they don't have air conditioning I was just dripping at my table despite the fact that there was a fan right next to me. I got my food for take-away.
In July and August, you can expect it to be like this all day, every day. This is the reason why I look forward to rain when it happens and it looked like we were going to get exactly that yesterday as the scary clouds rolled in and thunder cracked across the sky. Unfortunately the raining part of that mess only lasted about 10 minutes and the streets were so hot from being exposed all day that the rain that did fall completely evaporated just a minute or so after the rain hit it.
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It was like that, but filled with motorbikes driving in every imaginable direction.
I suppose this is a good time of year in Vietnam to stay at home and focus on saving and making money but since I work at home in my living room, you start to get cabin fever after a while. Thankfully, a few restaurants and pubs in the area realize that they can get more customers if they have air conditioning and they tend to do quite well during this time of year regardless of what the quality of their food, services, and prices are. The places like the burrito place that I mentioned earlier, well, they are almost completely devoid of customers which is a shame because I think with an air con unit or two, they would easily fill the place up like they do in other times of the year.
So if you were at all thinking of coming to visit Vietnam, and I think you should, perhaps delay it for several months. If you are at all like me and most other westerners, this temperature makes it near impossible to do anything at all outdoors and well, you probably aren't coming here so that you can stare out the window of your air conditioned hotel room.