Rain can often be a nuisance. Sometimes it’s cold. Slightly uncomfortable. Its impacts can be inconvenient, disruptive, even a deterrent to plans.
But the rain gets a bad rap, I’ve discovered, especially when it comes to travel. We feel the need to run for cover at first sight of a few droplets, but I think we could instead be more willing to run into rain’s opportunities.
This year, I’ve made good friends with the rain on my travels. Several of my tours or river cruise excursions turned out to be particularly soggy during parts. I saw much of Portugal’s Douro River Valley from underneath the shelter of a good umbrella in late March. I contemplated the birth of the Renaissance from puddle to puddle through Piazza della Signoria in Florence in May.
But it wasn’t until my most recent trip in August, a seven-night cruise on the Mekong River through Cambodia and Vietnam with AmaWaterways, that I was able to more fully appreciate the beauty of traveling in the rainy season.
In many regions around the world, there are two seasons that define the year: the dry season and the wet season. For the Mekong, the dry season runs from November through April and the wet season runs from May through October.
Suppliers say that most people harbor the misconception that traveling during the dry season is better because it rains all day, every day, during the wet season (it doesn’t). Bookings for AmaWaterways reflect that: the company said its Mekong cruises are booked solid from November through April, while there was still plenty of space available in August.
I joined a Riches of the Mekong itinerary in August, beginning with two nights in Siem Reap, and it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the wet season may well be the best time to see the Mekong.
Embracing the rain on the Mekong
On our bus rides through the countryside, it was hard to miss the sea of lime green spread across hundreds of acres of farmland. Fresh grasslands, new growth from rice paddies, trees overgrown with lush canopies that glittered under the hot sun — the sights all made for an incredibly scenic journey.
But the moodier moments I witnessed across the farmlands in Cambodia and Vietnam’s backcountry, where thick clouds rolled in with the threat of rain, I thought were the better scenes. I got caught in about three downpours while out exploring on my own and on a couple of excursions.
In Siem Reap, a few journalists and I ended an insanely hot, late afternoon trip to the ancient temples of Ta Prohm and Bayon with an exhilarating tuk tuk ride back to our hotel, the Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Gold & Spa Resort, in what I can only describe as a torrential downpour. It was what adventures in Southeast Asia are supposed to feel like, I thought: daring, unexpected, completely unpredictable.
The rains had a more sobering effect on me during an afternoon tour of some of Cambodia’s most famous killing fields — sites around the country that were used by the Khmer Rouge regime to systematically kill and bury more than 1.3 million Cambodians in a mass genocide that lasted from 1975 to 1979.
Our visit to Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the high school that was used by the Khmer Rouge for some of the worst atrocities during the genocide, was mostly dry. But right after that site, we visited Choeung Ek, another killing field, in a complete downpour. Our tour guide had been prepared and had enough umbrellas for everyone to use, along with ponchos, which didn’t do much against the rain. I didn’t mind getting soaking wet; after circling the killing trees and the stupa display of human skulls and bones, I was glad to have water on my face that I had not personally produced.
The best storm I was caught in happened in Vietnam. We were at Tra Su Bird Sanctuary, which guests visit when docked in Tan Chau. Our small boat ride through an idyllic mangrove forest to spot herons and egrets and other wildlife was made all the more magical when the rains started on the second half of our tour.
It was one of those moments where if you didn’t have an umbrella (most didn’t this time), you quickly found the joy in how little control you had in willing the rains away and just surrendered and embraced the organized chaos of what was happening.
And that’s when I knew: The Mekong is not a place to visit to avoid the rains. It’s the kind of place you go to find to fall in love with them.
