Vietnam is a tropical country, Da Nang is a city very near the beach in that tropical country. Because of this, we get rain storms that last for days on end and when it happens, I hope you managed to stock up on supplies for your house but if you didn't, the good news is that you are probably within 100 meters of a minimart because everyone is.
We got a warning message on Zalo, Vietnam's personal version of WhatsApp I guess you could say, warning us about high seas that were coming our way that was going to be accompanied by a potential typhoon. This would be very rare for this time of year and as of yet it has not turned into that. It has, however, turned into gloomy looking skies that could threaten of rain at any given moment.
This hasn't changed my life a great deal because I don't ever really need to leave my neighborhood, but I am sure it is annoying to the people that have to be on the other side of town for a job or something like that. All of the motorbike drivers put on plastic "tents" to drive in and for the most part, people drive a lot more conservatively, which is nice even though I am not going to join them in the fray on my own motorbike.
The areas around my house were never noisy because of the actual numbers of tourists, the tourists themselves are normally a quite quiet group, but the businesses no longer compete to attract customers by having some sort of awful music blasting all day and this is a big plus to me.
This street corner is one of many in my hood that is normally just filled with people walking this way and that, mostly to or from the beach. With the constant threat of rain, I don't really see many people down there at all. this sucks if you booked a week-long vacation here to spend time in the sun, but it is wonderful for those of us that live here that have to deal with the sound-systems that are set up for the visitors.
Then of course there is the largest blessing that comes along with prolonged rainstorms and that is that most of the construction sites just shut down. While there are almost no building restrictions in this country, it simply isn't possible to lay down cement properly if the rain is threatening to turn off an on all day long. Cement has a particular water percentage mix in it and if that area you are trying to put cement into has water dripping into it for an hour, you've got a problem that could potentially set the job site back a long ways both in terms of money and in materials. Therefore, these noise-boxes cover what they are doing with tarps and fuck off until the storm passes.
These are my favorite weeks of the year. I have a great hatred for construction sites just like anyone else that lives here but I try not to take it out on the individual workers. They are just doing a job and doing what they are told. It isn't them that needs to fire up the loudest hand tool they can find at 7:01 in the morning, they are told to do that.
But here we are on day 3 of basically not seeing the sun at all and some people are complaining about it but 2 groups of people definitely are not.
I don't surf a great deal but you can tell just by looking at this pic that I took hanging out of my window that there are very regular sets of waves at the shore. This is ideal for surfers, especially surfers that are not very good, like me. I might make my way down there just with my boogie board in the next few days because this silence that we are experiencing because of the rain is one of the greatest things that can happen in this otherwise very noisy city.
