One of the facts of travel is that over time you get used to tropical temperatures. When you first arrive somewhere like Asia the heat and the humidity hit you like a wall, and you feel unfit and unable to do anything (add that to jet lag, and imagine what a life our friend Peter has, as an international sales manager visiting Asia from England’s winter). Upon our arrival in Asia, it had still got to us, as New Zealand wasn’t exactly tropical when we left. And it zapped all of the energy out of us, and infused us with lethargy. So it has been good the spend a few days getting acclimatised on the beach (what a great excuse!). Your body adjusts by thinning down your blood over about two weeks, so that you can cope more easily with the heat (the same happens to our bodies in England, as we change from winter to summer, and vice versa – but of course it has longer to do this).

The result of all of this thinning is that “cold” takes on a different meaning. Each night, as we’ve gone to bed, we’ve set the air conditioning to a ‘cold’ temperature, Over the last four days that has gone from 22-degrees being too cold with just sheets on the bed, to last night, when we had to turn the air-conditioning off because it’s maximum of 28-degrees was too cold! What a contrast to England, where we have the heating set to 21-degrees, and have to turn it off at night or we get too hot. So here, we’re now acclimatised to 28-degrees being cool (which is exactly the night-time temperature here), and are starting to get to used to 34+ degrees during the day.