Padis, plantations and..... snow!

First.... Mark's weather report for the last couple of days is exactly what I teach when I'm doing equatorial climates.....
More monsoon rain and very humid. Also hot sun in between the downpours and sunburned for the first time since Turkey.

Day started dry but then the great cloud bursts started and created 3 inches of water on the road making cycling very difficult.
At three degrees north of the equator, the tropical wet and dry season regime of India and Thailand has given way to the more equatorial pattern of rain at all seasons! No comfort for Mark but very reassuring for me to know that the textbooks are right!

One of the features of rainfall at the equator is the typical daily pattern of clouds building up during the day leading to downpours in the afternoon. The graph above is for Kuala Lumpur, just south of where Mark is today and shows the average percentage of rain falling at different times of the day. 4pm is clearly when you need to have a brolly ready!

Today Mark has been cycling through some hilly terrain and must have been enjoying lovely views of padis and plantations, forests and land newly cleared and planted. This view is typical of the landscape he has been passing through today....

.....and close up, there is some lovely detail of flooded rice fields with their surrounding low mud walls called 'bunds'. To the right of the image are the serried ranks of oil palms we've become familiar with in the last couple of days.

As for the snow.... I'll bet Mark would have enjoyed a wee detour this evening. Does he even know that up in the hills surrounded by rainforest and just a few miles east of where he is staying tonight is the vast Genting Highland Resort? Now, believe me, if you only check out one link on tonight's posting, make it this one! You will not be disappointed. I have just explored every page of this website and I am speechless... that doesn't often happen to me.