We're in the wet season now. It lasts from around May to November. Most evenings we have rain, usually very heavy. We often have thunder and lightening which is particularly spectacular when the rain comes at night.
It gets dark at around 6pm every night all year and sunrise is around 6am every morning all year. The seasonal change to hours of daylight is something we quite miss. Our home is in Northern Ireland and dusk ranges from around 4pm on the 21st December to around 10pm on the 22nd June - the shortest and the longest days of the year.
As I type this I am hearing a chorus of frogs and toads outside my home here in Phnom Penh. It's loud but quite pleasant. Some of the gecko's that attach themselves to the walls outside catching mosquitoes at the outside lights, give a loud 5 beat rattle noise every 10minutes or so. Field and tree crickets are chirping and singing its quite a din but is strangely soothing. When you go to bed it's quite easy to imagine that you are in a tropical rain forest. We always sleep under a mosquito net at night - this adds the tropical jungle atmosphere even though we are well and truly in the city.
There is no malaria in Phnom Penh but there is Dengue Fever. I attended the funeral of a 10 year old Khmei child recently. She died from Dengue Fever. Two members of our church have it at the moment. There is no inoculation nor any significant treatment. The Dengue mosquito (pictured here) is different in appearance having striped legs and sometimes bodies. We get bites all the time, I think it's sweet Irish blood that attracts them. God has protected us from this deadly menace. God is good - all the time!
