No rain, no rain, no rain, no rain. Rain.

A weekly update is all that is needed on the Phuket weather blog at this time of year. A quick summary would be : hot and sunny all week. And then today started kind of hazy, looked like the sun would burn through, but somehow the day stayed kind of grey, and light rain fell in the early evening. A light rain after a long dry spell can lead to slippery roads. I was not at all surprised this evening, leaving the dive center at 6pm, to find a queue of traffic at the bottom of the hill between Kata and Chalong. I saw a couple of bikes on the road... the pick up truck in front of me had spinning back wheels .. hard to get traction on the hill.. it happened to me one time, and a whole load of cars had just pulled over rather than try to drive over the hill in the wet. It's worst when you get a little rain .. road is covered in light traces of oil and dust, road gets slippery. You have to be careful. That was indeed the first rain all week.. quick check (runs out to shed .... my rain gauge says 2mm.. was certainly more than that on the hill from Kata to Chalong.. a light drizzle was falling all the way home).

I guess tomorrow will be sunny again. Good, coz that light rain fell right on our mattress, which we took outside yesterday for a clean and an airing.. and now it's a soggy mattress. No risk leaving it outside we figured, hasn't rained in ages... Sh*t.

My average day this week... not as exciting as some people might imagine... ooh! Living in Phuket! But I do work all week. Wish I could go out taking photos and blogging all week, but there's the kids school to pay for and the mortgage and the loan for the car and gasoline and the internet bill, water bill, phone bill and and and. Work this week was pretty busy - must have mentioned it somewhere but I am manager at Sunrise Divers in Phuket, based at Karon Beach. Want to dive? Come to see me!

It's high season now, I take one day off at the weekend. This week it was Sunday. After a tasty and cheap brunch at the Central Festival Mall (in the food court) we headed to the bookshop where I had a long chat with our 9 year old daughter about books, the value of reading, the fact that NO I was not going to buy her a cartoon book, and a lot more about growing up and not being a little girl any more. Later the same day, we chatted more and I started to read Alice in Wonderland to her. After our conversation about cartoons, I picked this deliberately ... 'what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures?' I am happy to report that she has taken this on board and has been reading Alice in Wonderland.

On Sunday afternoon, we took a little drive into Phuket Town, and a walk up (part of ) Monkey Hill (actually called Khao To Sae). Not been for a while. Lots of locals come here for exercise, and a new restaurant has sprung up called Green Forest.. we had a drink and will go again for a meal sometime. We walked up past the Tiger shrine, and reached a viewpoint. Here's my life in Phuket:



Tired now, which I attribute to a couple of things: having no mattress to sleep on last night, just a very small foam pad which the kids love but I am too big for, and .. on Saturday night I was awake until 2am watching English football on TV and laughing at regular intervals as I could not believe I was watching my home town, Crawley Town, playing football against Manchester United.. on TV in Thailand. The FA Cup is not dead!

Last view - from Monkey Hill looking SE across Phuket Town as the evening drew in and lights went on across the town. This view from the restaurant.



Goodnight from Phuket!