Rain

As the vehemence of the rain eased, the normal activities in the street started to resume. The proprietors of the kerbside stalls peeled back the protecting plastic sheets, once more enticing the souvenir hungry tourists to examine the counterfeit watches, the local and not so local handicrafts, silk printed and styled into garments of every description, and not quite genuine Louis Vuitton luggage to carry it all home in. Puddles were set upon by eager bar girls, anxious to clear the path in front of their premises; at 4 pm customers were in short supply and the mama san would not take kindly to a potential customer choosing a drier place for their bottle of Singha.

The stillness that the downpour had brought to the town was shattered as a large box of firecrackers went off outside a neighbouring bar. As if this was their cue, the hordes of motorbikes which had stopped as soon as the the first drops of rain fell, gradually regrouped and continued their never ending staccato parade around the town, throwing out fountains of spray from the steaming tarmac.

I had been on the beach when it started, walking through the warm surf towards the towering limestone cliffs at the end of the bay. The light breeze had changed to a hot wind blowing onto the beach, on the horizon thick black clouds were growing fast, filling the sky and hiding the sun.

As the sky grew darker the blanket of cloud moving rapidly towards the island was accompanied by the roar of the torrential rain beating on the rolling sea. The coconut palms between the beach and the road picked up the wind, causing their long fronds to move up and down, as if they were preparing to fly away from the approaching storm.

I turned back towards the road as the wind picked up, pulling the white powdery sand into a fine mist. Before I reached the shelter of the palms the first drops of rain fell. Within seconds the full load of the heavy clouds was coming down, the hot wind driving the the rain into the town.

By the time that I reached the cover of the nearest bar I was as wet as I would have been if I had jumped into the sea. Sheltering in the bar were a collection of dripping tourists, enjoying the cheerful but slightly anxious sort of conversation that people have when the neighbours have been burgled.

I sat in a corner looking across the road to the beach. The rain was falling in a solid wall of water, cutting visibility to about ten metres and hammering onto the roof of the bar with enough noise to almost drown out the music blaring through the speakers.

One of the t shirt sellers from the beach was at the bar, determined not to lose the unique opportunity of having a crowd of potential customers who couldn’t walk away. He homed in on a couple of Australians and in an inspired piece of offensive marketing, sold each of them a T-shirt printed with the logo of the beer company whose profits they were apparently trying to double. Luckily for the seller, they had drunk enough not to notice that the shirts renamed the beer Clarsberg.

The rain had been dripping from the roof in several places, and inevitably, with a sharp crackle and blue flash, it found the fuse box. The lights and power went off, the girls behind the bar giggled and carried on doing nothing. One of the Australians remarked that the sudden quietness was the first time he’d experienced a music free bar in Asia, and ordered another round of beers to celebrate.

The torrent eased as quickly as it had begun. It had only rained for an hour but outside the road had become a canal, only a few of the big jeeps, popular with a certain type of European tourist, were cruising up and down, pushing a surge of water off the street and into the bars and shops.

As the last of the clouds passed so did the temporary respite from the afternoon sun. Within minutes the water had drained from the streets, leaving the tarmac steaming. The remaining puddles disappeared under the wheels of the returning traffic, on the beach the palms were still once more.