Raining rats and dogs

Phnom Penh has been getting some unseasonally heavy rain over the last few weeks. After speaking to locals and ex-pats who have been here a while it appears that these early rains don't consitute the arrival of monsoon season (although monsoon is imminent), but it does provide a taster of what we have in store for the next 6 months or so. Em snapped this photo of street 352 last week, just outside her office, after a particularly long and torrential downpour. It seems the drains and sewers here are woefully inadequate to deal with this intensity of rainfall and apparently floods like this can be a daily occurrence in some parts of Phnom Penh during monsoon. Em really struggled to get home from work on this particular day. Hazards to watch out for include the drain covers being forced up by the water pressure leaving gaping holes for you to disappear down, as well as wading through a dilute cocktail of raw sewage and other nasties. The cities many rats also come up from the sewers during rain this heavy and need somewhere high and dry to hole up. The evening of this storm we went to one of our local bars where I saw a very large rat run across the floor and under the benches. Although cooling rain sounds like a great idea right now in the height of the hot season I suspect that monsoon isn't going to be much fun.