Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Rainy Season

It is currently the rainy season in Hanoi. When I first heard about the rainy season I pictured it just consistently raining for a couple months straight. However that's not how it works. Basically it'll just be hot as hell here and all of a sudden the sky opens up and buckets of water drop from the cloud. The downpour is followed by gigantic strikes of lightning and ear shattering thunder. The storms last from anywhere between twenty minuets to a couple of hours.

This video (which you really can't see any of the rain but can hear it pretty well) was shot while I was writing at my computer. It was a normal day and then WHAM it became dark out and heavy rain began to fall. There was a ton of lightning which was bad news since I had to drive to work for my 4PM class.

In the states it is slightly nerve-wracking driving in a lightning storm despite being grounded in your car with four rubber wheels. Here it's just a tad scarier when you're riding a motorbike, completely exposed to the elements. Despite the two rubber wheels I'm pretty sure you'd be toast -- literally -- if lightning struck you.