An umbrella lowers my temperature as I struggled up a hill in Cambodia. People struggling with the heatwaves in Europe right now would benefit from an umbrella too.
Here is an excerpt from my book, Naked in Budapest travels with a passionate nomad, which explains how I learnt to always carry an umbrella in hot places.
See, others carry them too … being out of the sun lowers my temperature by about ten degrees it feels
‘You go ahead. I can’t walk up here. It’s too steep, too hot.’
‘Yes you can. We’re nearly there. You will love the waterfall.’
‘We have waterfalls in New Zealand; I’ll give this one a miss.’
‘Come on. You can get up here. Just around the next corner is the last steep bit – you can make it. Just take it a step at a time. We’re in no hurry,’ Rob tells me.
‘No, I’ll sit here in the shade and wait for you all to come back down. I won’t go away from the track.’
‘Here, I’ve got an umbrella, use that, it will reduce the heat for you.’
‘I don’t have the bloody energy to hold a damn umbrella.’
‘Well you walk and I’ll hold it,’ says Rob and step by slow step I get up the mountain, feeling like a cross between a missionary with her servant and a stupid, overweight, unfit, old fool.
I’m the first to fall into the cool water – my T-shirt, shorts and sandals are off in seconds and in my underwear, I’m wallowing like the buffalo. Later, back in the boat, we make a list of the 20 different creatures we’ve seen: leeches are not on the list. The others return to Sihanoukville leaving me in this small village to find a bed for the night.
Next day I’m the only foreigner in the taxi when I travel through the mountains towards Thailand. We get pushed through sticky orange clay and cross four rivers by ferry and at each one, I’m the centre of attention – few westerners have used this road that opened two months ago: no one in the taxi speaks English.
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