A few days ago I wrote about the lack of rain so far on this trip. Well my message must have gotten through to the Buddha of the rain.
It started to rain the evening that I arrived in Luang Prabang and hasn't stopped since, 36 hours and counting. It is not your European drizzle or New Zealand squalls but torrential monsoon rain all day longs as if someone has opened up a fire hydrant and aimed it at the city.
The Mekong is a mass of floating debris and big churning water. it's also steadily rising. Last night just before dark I grabbed my umbrella and walked to the boat landing to see what the skippers of the long boats were doing. Quite tellingly they were all busy moving there mooring ropes as high up the bank as they could,and the water looks indeed like it's rising.
At least another ten vertical meters to go before it hits the road though and there is a hill in the middle of town that goes up another two hundred odd meters so now worries about washing away anytime soon.
Note: Just when I was about to post this the power failed. Now 24 hours later it rains again but it was dry for a while yesterday afternoon and I went for a walk. The places along the river bank have suffered quite a bit of erosion with banana plantations and vegetable gardens just slipping away in the river. The cause for the power outage became clear too. An enormous tree had lost it's footing on the hillside and crashed across the power lines leading to a small transformer. It was eight in the evening before the lights came back on.
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