It Is Very Hot Right Now

Hot season has arrived in Cambodia. For a country that is already warm and humid during most of the year, this is rather bad news. The air these days is coarse, and the sun beats down with such force at midday that it would make you believe perdition was only a few steps away. The canals that once held abundant pools of rainwater are now cracked and dry, and the former green rice fields are yellow. A day’s average temperature is somewhere between 35 and 36 degrees, and the full brunt of the sun can be felt between 11:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon. My house is virtually uninhabitable during the day, for the corrugated steel roof magnifies the intensity of the sun and heats my bedroom to over 37 degrees. In other words, it’s really awful. However, I have come up with a comprehensive list of ways to keep cool.

1. Find a Fan: Worship It and Keep It Happy

I currently have two fans. One is powered by normal electricity, and the other is powered by my car battery + inverter contraption. On nights that I want to use my computer, I sit on the tiled floor of my room and have a fan blow over the two of us. I try to go back and forth between using the two so that I don’t use too much of the family’s electricity. During the day, I go to the school’s office and sit under one of the big ceiling fans there. They are powered by the solar panels on the roof, and I usually try to take a nap under them if I can during the afternoons that I do not have any classes.

2. Wear As Little Clothing As Decency Permits

When I am not at school or elsewhere in the community, I am usually at home. Normal rules of dress do not apply here, and I am free to change into a kromah. When Cambodian men are overheated, it is usually standard procedure for them to wear nothing except this cloth wrapped around their wastes like a towel. The cloth is usually very thin, so it is actually quite comfortable to even sleep with it on. Women can a wear a sarong, but as far as I can tell it is quite undignified for them to lay about in them as much as the men do.

3. Shower Early, Shower Often

I pour cold water over myself at least three to four times daily these days. When you are baked with sweat for hours at a time, it is pretty much the only thing you can do to get any kind of relief. Taking a cold nyuk dtuk and sitting in front of a fan is the closest thing you can get to air conditioning. It is also helpful if you shower right before going to bed, as the relief will relax you enough to fall asleep.

4. Ice

Iced coffee, tea, or Coke can be a lifesaver. Even if you just order a glass of ice, you can fill it with water as many times as you like. The girls who work at the café I usually go to have learned that I like a lot of ice in whatever drink I order that day. They have also commented on several occasions that they have never seen such a person frazzled by the heat. Cambodians seem hot during this season as well, but it does not seem like they get the headaches or stomach cramps that I get. I get the sense that they rather enjoy the heat, and dislike the wind and the rain.

Apologies in Advance

With these methods, I’m hoping that I can survive the Cambodian hot season. Even with these methods in place, I have to say that the onslaught of the heat has left me in a rather languid condition. My computer also seems to heat up rather quickly as well, and I am worried about not using it too much for fear of it dying. The season is affecting my ability to type as much as I have in the previous months. You must forgive me, dear reader, but I’m afraid the output of blog posts during this season will be less than those of the previous two seasons. There will be other posts to come though, as I write all of these notes by hand before I type them here.

All I can do now is just survive.