A bit more...
3/21/2019
Today's Topic: It's coming...Summer in North Việt Nam officially begins in May and runs through August. Although the temperature here in Hà Nội has already begun to slowly rise (see below https://www.bbc.com/weather/1581130 ), it does fluctuate. It was 69 F most of this week, but now it is heading up again. I'm told in June it will rise dramatically (during the day and night) and that July is the hottest month of the year in Hà Nội. Today, at 12:00 noon it is ~86 F, but with the 71% humidity it is feeling like 105.8 F...and believe me, that is no exaggeration! bleah... As a side note, the walls and floors in my house have tiny beads of water clinging to them and my windows on the outside are foggy. This is because, as I've said before, the walls of my house are concrete and the tiles on the floor sit on a concrete substrate. Because the overnight temps are still in the mid to lower 60s F, the ambient temperature of the concrete right now is around mid-60's F throughout the day, so the humidity begins to condense on the cooler walls, floors, and the outside of the windows during the day (the windows clear up and then fog on the inside as the temperature raises outside). My mirrors also look like I took a hot shower (foggy). I am told that it has been significantly warmer this winter than any time in memory and global warming is the cause. If this trend continues, I do not know what the summer months will bring? The average temperature in Hà Nội in March is 21 C (69.8 F) and June, July, August is 29 C (84.5 F) https://www.holiday-weather.com/hanoi/averages/ As you can see below, however, we are already above average in March (i.e., hitting July temps!). If this trend continues, I am sure it will be a hot summer.
All in all, I don't experience the humidity as being "oppressive" like I did when I arrived last July. I suppose this is partly because I have acclimated and partly due to psychological survival. I arrived on July 27 (2018) and I was told I had just missed the hottest (and rainiest) weather Hà Nội, and as I recall, it was the humidity that was pounding me into the ground, not the heat. I can say without a doubt or exaggeration, it is a rare day in Hà Nội when it isn't humid (see below https://weatherspark.com/y/116009/Average-Weather-in-Hanoi-Vietnam-Year-Round). I'm going to close this "whah...whah...whah...' sympathy session with one final comment. Yesterday was just as humid and hot, as was the day before... have you ever experienced drying yourself off after your shower with a cold, damp towel because it doesn't air dry and you don't have access to a clothes dryer? or oven? If not, imaging after swimming at your local pool you dry off with your towel, put it into your gym bag, go home, throw your gym bag on the cold tile floor overnight in your bathroom, get up, shower, grab that same towel, and...well you get it.
Bonus topic: Rice. I had the pleasure of traveling outside of Hà Nội these past few weeks. Everywhere I went in the north of Việt Nam, it was wet rice planting season https://hanoiecotour.com/how-to-grow-vietnam-rice/ (I was seeing step 7-13 everywhere). Watching women bent over planting seedlings in a flooded rice paddy, or men plowing fields behind a water buffalo using a wooden plow was extremely iconic, and what I have always envisioned in my head when thinking about Việt Nam.These past few weeks, however, I have not been viewing it as the cultural icon it is. Instead, I have found myself thinking about how backbreaking it must be to spend hours, on hours, bent over planting seedlings or, how difficult it must be to wrestle a heavy wooden plow through 11-15 inches of water and mud every day. The vast majority of the fields I witnessed being plowed and planted these past weeks were not those of the agricultural giants who produce rice on an industrial scale, they were the 2 hectare (~5 acre) or less plots of the average provincial (rural) family laboring to feed his or her struggling family. Many, many women from these families, in order to make ends meet, travel into Hà Nội for the week to sell fruit or tourist items for 12-15 hours a day and then return to their homes on the weekend to work the rice fields. Although I never blogged about it, I did witness the other end of the spectrum last fall when families were out harvesting the golden stalks of rice that reflected the previous February-March's hard work. Every day I consume rice in some form (as does anyone who lives or visits here). Rice is ubiquitous in Việt Nam. And every day when I eat my rice, I think of those men and women (and children) who work so hard for their daily rice.
Trifecta: Flowers. Flowers bloom year round in Việt Nam and Hà Nội is no different. In fact, there are 12 flower seasons in https://www.pata.org/overwhelming-beauty-of-12-flower-seasons-in-hanoi/ That said, we are on the cusp of the March Sua flower bloom, April is the lily bloom, and May is the Phoenix and Banaba bloom. But it is June that I am waiting for.June is the lotus season. The lotus is the national flower of Việt Nam and Hà Nội has many, many lakes and ponds that will be filled with them.