The first time I travelled to the tropics was the first time I really travelled anywhere. After graduating from art college I decided to hop on a plane and explore Asia, using the home of dear family friends in Phuket as a base. One day, while exploring Phuket town, I stumbled upon a show and sale of a local photographer. The man, whose name I have long forgotten, had spent his life documenting his town and his photographs were now being sold by his estate. I looked through the smaller prints hoping to find something that both grabbed my attention and that I could afford.

There were busy scenes of towns, nostalgic smiles of more un-named people going about their everyday lives, bucolic landscapes of the surrounding countryside. Lovely, but nothing spoke to me. Then I found a photo of a man and a woman, dressed in fine clothing, backs to the camera. The man had his head turned, his face appearing in profile, the back of his simple, white linen shirt stained in sweat. I recognised the man from billboards posted throughout Bangkok. It was the King of Thailand, the photo a record of a royal visit many years before.

I knew right away the photo was subversive…but that’s not what drew me to  the image.

The photo was risque because it was taken with the King facing away from the camera. Just as you should never turn your back on royalty – always bow and back away several steps before turning to exit the room – I suspected taking such a candid photo of the royal couple was also probably forbidden. I admired that the photographer was brave enough to raise his camera and capture this moment. One that showed the King in a very human way, sweaty and wrinkled and trying to maintain a sense of dignity. The very way that I had been feeling since touching down in Thailand several weeks before.

I chuckled to myself and dug in my purse for a handful of baht to buy the photo, silently thanking the photographer for his keen eye and bravery. In a land where I felt so very different – Canadian winter white, a head taller than most locals, yet to conquer the basics of the language – I finally felt like there was a common thread between us. When it’s hot, even the King sweats in public.

That photo has been tucked away in a box for safe keeping for years, but I think of it often. Recently, in a lineup at a store, the damp back of a local in front of me, I remembered that image and smiled through my discomfort. It’s not just me and my pre-set Canadian internal thermostat (I have a theory that the climate you are brought up in is your preset for life and no matter how long you live somewhere else your body never, really, truly adapts). After all, not even a King can’t escape the crushing, wet heat of the tropics.  

It’s been hot here recently. Not just tropical hot but HOT hot.

Can’t sleep cuz it’s so hot. Don’t want to eat cuz it’s so hot. Getting cranky with each other for no reason cuz it’s so hot.

Have to change your shirt three times a day cuz you sweat when you breathe let alone walk across the cabin hot. Doesn’t matter if you take four mini showers a day cuz none of them are actually cool enough to be refreshing and the tiny amount of effort it takes to wrap a towel around your body causes you to break into a sweat again anyway hot. Everyone get their own, personal fan hot. (Yes, even Kitten because she’s gotta wear a fur coat in this heat!)

In fact, it’s been heat wave warning hot. Sure the thermometer might only read 33C but Met Malaysia says it will feel more like 43C. And this morning our themostat confirmed that sometime in the last 24 hours the cabin temp did, indeed reach 42 degrees.

And yes, I can hear you from here, “You live on boat, quit your whinging and just go for a swim!”

I would, even when the water is a little less clear than I would prefer (harder to see what’s swimming around looking for a snack). I would even ignore the usual rafts of floating plastic, (an everyday sight in Asia) to go for a dip. This week, however, I cannot ignore the slick of fuel rainbowing across the surface of the water, sometimes heavy enough that the air in the cabin is laced with the smell of diesel.  Nor can I ignore the jellyfish.

The hot weather, the odd late night thunderstorm, and possibly the full moon a couple weeks ago, has bought a bloom of jellyfish.

It is thought that jellyfish migrate into shallow water to spawn. A few weeks ago there were small, purple speckled ones around the boat. They looked like the mushrooms from Super Mario with eight, fat little furry legs. They probably wouldn’t have much of a sting to them if you managed only touching one or two. Alas, since there were literally hundreds in the bay it would have been nigh impossible to get wet without getting severely zapped.

Then the moon jellies arrived.

These are larger flatter jellyfish that we’ve seen in dense swarms over the years. I think these are pretty low on the sting scale, but it’s still kinda creepy swimming through that kind of texture.

Then last week, Steve saw not one but FOUR box jellyfish while walking down the dinghy dock on his way home from town.

And this morning, while I was having coffee in the cockpit at 0600 with my notebook in hand trying to figure out where this rambling blog post was going to go, TWO swam right by the boat!

Box jellyfish, for anyone not familiar, are as pretty to behold as they are deadly.

I am talking get tangled up in their 1-3 meter-long tentacles and you’ll be lucky to live. Seriously. Their venom is some of the most lethal in the whole world. In fact, according to Wikipedia, when analysed their venom contained more than 170 toxic proteins. No wonder a severe sting, which is something like getting tentacles wrapped around your leg or getting slashed across the chest, can stop your heart within two minutes.

Also, did you know that there are over 50 species of ‘boxies’ (Aussie slang) and that they have been seen sighted world wide, as far north as Japan and as far south as South Africa? Yeah, we didn’t either.

I might be willing to gamble that there are no salt water crocodiles close by, but I am not willing to go up against a jellyfish that kills people. (And yes, there have been saltwater croc sightings not so far away recently as well.) As my Mother always says, I might be crazy, but I am not that crazy!

This kind of heat steals my motivation and leaves me with nothing but patches of heat rash and areas of chafe. It makes my brain feel mushy, my thoughts too heavy to lift. It makes me not want to write. Or cook. Or eat. Or move in any way that requires me to leave the rush of air in front of a fan. But that’s not how life works.

Thankfully the clouds have started to change.

Growing tall and dark and threatening on the afternoon horizon, rumbles of distant thunder roll across the still evening air, lightening flashes grab the eye in the dark distance. This more volatile weather means a shift is coming. The long term forecast says the winds, which have been next to non-existent recently, should start to blow out of the SW soon, signalling the change of season, the end of the driest, hottest months in Borneo. Until then, I guess it’s just plenty of short showers, mountains of laundry, and sweaty, wilted smiles while standing in the line at the grocery store.

Love,
H&S