Yesterday morning dawned clear and the sites outside my hotel beckoned, but I have been without a good Internet connection for days, so I just had to catch up on email and blog posting before hitting the pavement. It was noon before I finished. I grabbed my backpack and headed out the front door of the hotel, surprised to discover that the weather had tuned grey and drizzly. The tuk-tuk drivers and taxis love this weather – they figure no one wants to walk in the rain. But I was determined and shook my head “no” to their advances. I noticed a bookstore just down the street and I needed something to read, so I headed in that direction.

Crowds shelter under awnings, waiting for the rain to let up

I hadn’t gone two blocks when the rain began in earnest – and I mean it was a deluge! I ducked under an overhang to wait it out. At first I was standing there, shifting my weight from one foot to the other and not really thinking or paying much attention to what was going on around me. Suddenly I noticed the Thai Lottery building directly across the highway from where I was standing. A set of cavernous covered steps led into the building and as the rain continued unabated, more and more people collected on the protected stairway. There were shirts and umbrellas of all colors, softly muted by the falling rain as in a watercolor painting.
Watching this moving canvas of color brought me into the moment and I started noticing all the little details around me.

A tourist bus sped by, casting an enormous shield of water from its windshield that formed an arc around the front of the bus, as if shielding it from harm.

An open-air tuk-tuk putted along, the driver and passenger both hunched under the vehicle’s narrow metal roof. Continue reading →