Hello August! And the heat continues ...

Well, this is getting silly! The weather is broken. This low season, anyone visiting Phuket has either been too hot or too wet. Last month we had over 300mm of rain in a very wet first 9 days. If you were in Phuket in the first week of July, you may well curse any silly blogger who says that the low season is quite nice :) And after that? Well, my rain gauge measured 6mm in the next 3 weeks. And now we're a week into August, and it's still hot. Have seen a few minor showers, that's all - like yesterday morning, a sudden shower which lasted about 2 minutes. Anyone who's been in Phuket the last few weeks has to be thinking "Wow! we got great weather in the low season!" - truth is that the low season is mostly OK. Anyone who gets a totally rained-out holiday is very unlucky. Main bonus in low season is the hotel rates - way down on high season.

I'm certainly not complaining about the good weather, although the heat does start to get tiresome. I like the low season weather because it's normally very mixed. In a "normal" low season, weather changes every few days. Rain is good, we need rain to cool off, to water the green island, to fill the reservoirs. Not enough rain and people start to talk about water shortages. A tourist coming for 7 days wants 7 days of sun. A local wants some rain sometimes! The nice weather this month has allowed us a couple of very nice days out, we visited Koh Yao Noi, the Gibbon Rehabilitation Center, Kathu Temple, and this last weekend there has been a street festival in Kathu village, just round the corner from our house. The weather was kind this year, and the streets have been full. On August 4th in the evening, there was a street parade...







The street fair continued for 3 evenings. Yesterday, I found a cure for the heat:



Must quickly mention the Olympics, very happy that I can watch everything live on Youtube, wish I could stay awake until 3am to watch some more of the athletics, but have been enjoying it all - cycling, horses, canoeing, rowing, even gymnastics. Makes me proud to be British, but at the same time, happy to be living in Phuket :)