Cooling down

When I went back to Singapore and Malaya in 1990, I'd forgotten just how hot and sticky it was there. Here's a photo of me in about 1966 cooling down in the back garden of our house at Jalan Wijaya. The water from the hose was great to keep the heat at bay. I remember that it always had a few holes in it so this made it even better! I remember when we first arrived at Jalan Wijaya and the heat was proving a bit too much. When the heavy rains of the monsoon season started, we all ran out just to cool down. Our amah, Azizah, laughed and must have thought we were crazy. I remember that even though we were getting wet, and it was a break from the heat, the rain was still warm! We had fans in the front room and the bedrooms to keep us cool and the windows had to stay open at night. This had its disadvantages though as mosquitoes would come in and also there was the fear of thieves who would sometimes get a long bamboo pole with a fishing hook on the end to hook what they could. We must have been too hot to sleep on most nights yet in one of my old photos, there's a blanket on the bed. Perhaps we just adjusted to it. I remember we were very cold when we finally returned to England!