Canadians by nature are obsessed with meteorological phenomena. It’s just part of our nature. We say sorry, we say “eh” and we make comments about the weather (too hot, too cold, too much snow, not enough snow… you get the idea). I try really hard to just enjoy whatever weather we get, after all you can’t change it so might as well make the most of it. Where we live there is an impressive annual temperature swing of more than 60 degrees Celsius so we have a lot of practice getting used to different temperatures.
Be that as it may, adjusting to the heat of South East Asia is a different animal altogether. Since we arrived in India over a month ago, moved through Malaysia and now Bali, it has become common place to have daytime temperatures in the range of 32-34 C. Of course Canadians aren’t satisfied with such basic numbers so we also pioneered this thing called the humidex to show off just how hot it FEELS. In this part of the world where humidity ranges from 60-80%, we have some fancy math that tells us it FEELS like 38-41 C.
Now, I’m fully prepared to admit my own obsessions with the weather are downright silly. And while I’m a big fan of science, math and data to explain away the validity of the humidex, in the end the numbers here don’t matter at all. All you need to know about South East Asia is that it is CRAZY hot. It’s so hot that everytime we walk for more than 5 minutes, it’s guaranteed that we need a change of clothes when we get back. It’s so hot that our shoes are literally falling apart from the hot roads. It’s so hot that they don’t have hot water heaters – there is only hot water from the taps.
I keep thinking that eventually I will acclimatize to the heat – it should work that way. So far though, it hasn’t. I’m still shocked everyday when I got outside and it feels like I’m melting. Thank goodness for swimming pools – the one at our hotel must be around 31 degrees, so refreshing! In the end, I may never get used to it being this hot. But the really funny part is that while I likely won’t get used to the heat, I will likely become less tolerant of the cold, so winter next year will “FEEL” even colder than it is, but then at least I’ll have something to talk about.