I recently had to repair my sleep schedule that was absolutely annihilated by the rather late parties that took place on New Year and then by the early morning US football party that a friend of mine who I really like invited me to.
When I get in this position I normally have two choices: I can take a bunch of sedatives to force myself to sleep or I can pull an all-nighter and then force myself to stay awake all day the following day using coffee, Red Bull, and what not. Even though I do realize that caffeine and whatever-the-hell-it-is that they put in Red Bull are also drugs, I prefer not to develop some sort of dependency on sleeping pills again. So I chose the latter strategy.
This was all going fine and well until I went on a wonderful early morning walk with Nadi - which is the ONLY time of day where everyone in Da Nang shuts the fuck up for a little while - and when we were more than 500 meters from home the skies just seriously opened up and we got drenched.
Nadi normally gets a bath once a week but she was so gross from kicking up all the road sludge in her undercarriage when we got back home that a bath was extremely necessary.
Believe it or not, this is her BEFORE we soaped her up and gave the bath. It was raining buckets and we got drenched to the bone. I think she actually was ok with the bath because she was cold and I used warm water on her. She is so compliant regardless. She fears the word "bath" but once she gets in there she doesn't put up much in the way of a fight.
later on I did my job and was finished with almost everything I had to do in a day and was kind of wondering what to do now. That's the thing about waking up early ya know? What will I do with the time? I ordered a coffee and me and Nadi went and sat outside, which was now completely dry because it was 6 hours after the rain had stopped.
She enjoys sitting on the top of this table that is located right outside my apartment building because people will come by and say hello and give her scritches. It also keeps her away from the other neighborhood dogs that have irresponsible owners that just let them run free. Nadi really doesn't care for other dogs.
A bit later on I went walking to a breakfast place only to discover that there is one of the only people that I don't care for in all of Da Nang already eating there. So we jogged on to a new place that neither of us have ever been to before.
I was not at all surprised when the menu featured an "American Breakfast" because every single damn place here has that on their menu. I don't know where they got the idea that Americans have this for breakfast. My mom certainly didn't have the time or ingredients necessary to put 7 different food types on a single plate for breakfast... and we NEVER had beans for breakfast.
It was a pretty fantastic deal though man. It was around 100k VND which is less than $4 and it was a lot more food than I would normally eat for breakfast.
Nadi got plenty of pieces of it especially the hash browns which I think were a bit excessive in quantity. Oh well, it is better to have too much than not enough, right?
After our walk home the sky started looking like the weather could turn again and thankfully we made it back home before the rain started again. What a nightmare it would be for Nadi to have to take 2 baths in the same day!
This is one of the dangers of rainy season though. I normally really like rainy season because the weather stays cool and that is a rarity here in Vietnam. I'll take the highly increased chance of rain over near 100% humidity and temps so hot that you start to sweat immediately and cannot possibly stop doing so until you are in air con.... that is for sure.
This "heaven" of temperature only lasts until around mid February though, so I try to make every day count.