Cold Weather in Cambodia December, 2006 Perceptions of cold are certainly relative (see 28 November") and we have had evidence of that this past week when the temperature actually went down a few degrees. On consecutive mornings, it kept dropping a little more overnight until one morning it was 73ºF/22.5ºC in my room. I thought it was delightful, even though the temperatures would still climb to the high 80ºs each day, but the local people were freezing to death. Cambodian houses do not close up tight like western houses. They are designed so that the air can always circulate through the house, a necessity during most of the year, but a chilling inconvenience on the days when it is "cold" by their standards. Here are some pictures of people on the street early in the morning one day last week. Many (most?) don't have a jacket or heavy coat and the best they can do is a long sleeve shirt or several layers of clothing. Maybe literally everything they own.

Perception has a lot to do with our sense of hot or cold, but the discomfort of the local people was caused by an actual drop in temperature that was significant not only to the people. I thought getting down to 73º was delightful, but when the sudden drop was from the low 90ºs, it was enough to make the people shiver and also to buckle the floor tiles on the porch of the apartment we rent. Can you see the two rows of tiles under the chairs that have buckled upwards? The contraction and expansion of three cool nights followed by hot afternoons broke them loose. The chairs were to remind Ed McGovern and me not to step on the buckled tiles and maybe crack them. The landlord sent over this father and son team to repair to reset the tiles. They came on Sunday morning, Christmas Eve, which certainly wouldn't happen in the US! They didn't do a great job and ended up cracking two of the tiles, one quite badly. They used a power saw to cut between the tiles. Go to Charlie Dittmeier's home page