Tropical Depression

Now, like you, when I received an email with this as the subject line yesterday from my caring and kind Head, I too thought it concerned the mental strain of being away from one's family for long periods of time, sentenced to a life of sunshine, exotic food, cheap tailors and swimming pools, but apparently, a tropical depression is a type of storm, like a typhoon. Who knew?

We were encouraged to get home before 4pm and stay inside for fear of flying building materials and flash flooding. I didn't need to be told twice, so off I went, for the sake of my safety, scattering and abandoning marking in my wake. 

As I've had some lovely, now very grown up, visitors from Watford over these last few days, I hurried home to warn them that taking a bus to Cambodia that evening might not be advisable, and that RoD and I were stocking up on vitals like gin and also tonic in case we were rained in, and had to evacuate to her flat on the 13th floor rather than the 4th, where I am, and where flood waters would clearly inundate us and carry us away on a river of burst sewage pipes and cholera. 

They regarded me with a look of cool gap yah students as I listed all the exciting things I could do if we got the following day off school (catch up on marking, ironing, clean the flat, check the wedding list, reply to my emails) and stared expectantly at the cloud free skies outside. 

At around 6:45, there was a brief shower, and RoD messaged to say that yoga had been CANCELLED.  Horror of horrors!  Thankfully, yoga had not, in fact, been cancelled, but for a moment it was touch and go, but I did eventually 'go', rather than 'touch' and waited for the first torrents of rain to interrupt the peace and serenity of my downward facing dog. They did not. 

By the time the used-to-be-young-and-now-are-adults guests left, there was still no sign of this storm, which was a colossal anticlimax, especially as one news article said that ALL schools in HCMC would be closed. What it really meant was 'All Vietnamese primary schools, not international schools' would be enjoying an evening of gin followed by a day of marking and tea and ironing. To add insult to injury, during the night, I was not awoken by inconsiderately loud claps of thunder, or cranes smashing through my window, or rising floodwaters, or the howling of rampant winds. Very disappointing. 

In the morning though, it was raining, like it often does in Vietnam during rainy season, and I made the uncharacteristically sensible decision to take a taxi, rather than my bike and arrive at school dry, rather than soaked to the bone with hair sticking to my face. 

Now this is where the story gets interesting (that was all the lengthy, tension-building exposition). On my taxi journey, I realised that even the highway was flooded, which almost never happens, and my taxi driver refused to drive down another flooded road, which is normally the quickest route to school. After we'd found a detour and rescued another teacher, the driver finally abandoned us - like that lift operator who abandons Jack and Rose in Titanic - and we had to wade the rest of the way. Have some pictures to see how bad it was:

Gross slimy stuff floated past and touched my leg. I don't know what it was, but I imagine it was entirely disgusting. 

Luckily, I was rescued by the Ginger Swan who ushered me into a taxi where we both squealed in excitement and took photos of the impact of tropical depression like tourists, not experienced expats. 

Ginger Swan: this is the sort of thing that they show on the telly!  (Snaps some more photos) We're supposed to be British, but we never get rain like this!