My First Cyclone (or typhoon, I’m not sure which it is called in SE Asia!)... 30/09/09

So yesterday we woke up to very substantial winds and even more rain (if that is possible) then started to hear stories from other people in the town that the Cyclone, which has caused havoc and many deaths in the Philippines, was heading our way. It seemed as though it was going to hit Vietnam about 200km north of us and move up through Laos, so we were only ever going to get the tails. However, I have now decided that this is more than enough to ever get of a Cyclone!
In the afternoon we went on the bikes (eek) down to Meg’s house and had the handover meeting, having to bellow over the howling wind and rain. Was almost amusing apart from the fact that a) soaking wet b) freezing cold c) in a Cyclone!!
We then decided that we should maybe inform VSO about said storm heading towards us, just in case. Also, all the locals had never seen anything like it (this is the worst weather here for about 70 years!) so not really sure what to do. VSO then got on to the Embassy and the advice came back that we were to get ourselves into low concrete accommodation. Problem was, by this point it was getting very dodge to leave Jan and Keith’s (and they had made an amazing dinner for us all, including two different kinds of cake!) so we decided to stay there and wait it out. Their house is wood but not on stilts, as it has been built to the landlord can live under it. Also, by this point the electricity had come back on so we could watch CNN (we were on it quite a lot actually!) and play video games.
I notice how Cambodians can fix the electricity in about 2 hours in a Cyclone but our electricity was off for nearly two days at home when a tree fell on a power line, thank you South West Electric.
So anyway, we had an amazing dinner with mashed potato, yummy casserole and veg followed by carrot cake and raisin cake WITH CUSTARD. There was also plenty of wine, which may have helped. So we had a jolly good time really whilst the storm raged around us.
At about 9:30pm the worst of it had past and we were able to get a moto lift from the boys back to our (concrete) hotel.

So all is well! Just the other 3 cyclones forming at the moment to worry about...!!

Love xx