Back in an early post of mine I described – excuse me, complained about – the weather here in Mae Sot. When I first got here it was the tail end of the dry season. And it was indeed dry and HOT. Beautiful blue skies and blazing, merciless sun every day. Now the dry season has yielded to the rainy season and the monsoons are here.
The monsoon is pretty awesome actually. That old adage about pouring when it rains really applies here. It usually doesn’t rain for very long. But when it does it does with a vengeance. A few weeks ago I was in a car when the clouds decided to do their thing. And do it they did, it was like driving through a swimming pool.
Anyway, like I said, I think the rain is groovy. The temperature has gone down nicely and many nights are pleasantly cool. But as we all know in this world nothing comes for free. In payment for the more reasonable temperatures and the beautiful green fields we get a great cloud of bugs.
Now I don’t know what kind of bugs these are but they are not mosquitoes (thank god) but I think this nicely exemplifies conditions generally.
I stress that they aren’t mosquitoes not only because of my own strong personal aversion to that particular pest but because here in Mae Sot mosquitoes are more than just pests. As in many tropical places “rainy season” is synonymous with “malaria and dengue season” both of which are transmitted through mosquito bites. I’m taking anti-malaria pills but there is no preventive drug for dengue (charmingly known as break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease due to the intense joint pain that is a common symptom). Only way to not get it is to not get bitten, a difficult prospect these days. But I persevere.
I actually have to admit that there’s a part of me that half-wants to get dengue or malaria just to have the experience and live to tell the tale (both can be deadly but are fairly easy to treat). It seems kind of a like a world-traveler red badge of courage. Like I said I half-want this to happen. You can leave your rating of my naive insanity on a 1-10 scale with 1 being “very” and 10 being “dangerously” in the comments.
