All posts tagged typhoon

Guess I picked the wrong time to travel to the Philippines

By On September 29, 2009 In China, Latest, Personal With No Comments Permanent Link to Guess I picked the wrong time to travel to the PhilippinesPermalink
Should I stay or should I go?

Things aren't looking good in the city I'm supposed to fly into on Thursday.

My plans to travel to the Philippines on Thursday just got a little complicated.

The government said today that 246 people died in flooding caused by heavy rains from Typhoon Kestana. The storm hit Manila on Saturday when it was still considered a tropical storm. It is the worst flooding to hit the area in over 40 years. Reports say the rainfall on Saturday (16 in) exceeded the average for the entire month of September. Another storm is expected to hit a different island of the Philippines on Thursday.

Guess who was planning to fly into Manila on Thursday evening? (Hint: me).

At the moment, those plans are still on. I am heading over there with a small group of 6 other people from the CTLC program. We will go to the Hong Kong airport on Thursday afternoon and play it by ear. If the flight is canceled, we’ll travel somewhere else. If it’s still on, we’ll leave Manila immediately upon landing and head to a different island that wasn’t hit by the typhoon.

All in all, there are about 40 people from the program traveling to the Philippines in separate groups. We are traveling there as part of our week off for China’s National Day holiday celebrations.

Oh, typhoon season. You’re going to take some getting used to.

UPDATE (10/1/09): I canceled the trip. More details here.

Typhoon days are the new snow days

By On September 29, 2009 In China, Latest, Personal With No Comments Permanent Link to Typhoon days are the new snow daysPermalink
Typhoons (or cyclones) actually aren't as scary as you think they'd be.

Typhoons (or cyclones) actually aren't as scary as you think they'd be. Above: people in Shanghai during Typhoon Koppu.

One of the weirder (or cooler?) things about living in Southeast Asia is typhoon season. (Typhoons are basically the Asian version of hurricanes).

Being from Michigan, I’ve never had the experience of living through any type of cyclone season. Typhoons and hurricanes always seemed so distant. News reports made the hurricane/typhoon zones seem dangerous.

Naturally I was a little worried two weeks ago when I experienced my very first typhoon.

Typhoon Koppu hit my province (Guangdong) on September 14. It ran a ship aground in Zhuhai, a city about three hours from here. It also shut down the markets in Hong Kong for a morning. Hong Kong is less than an hour away from here.

On the night of the 14th, my school’s contact teacher called to let me know that Luoling would be closed the next day. That night, the downpour was pretty heavy with strong winds.

But by the next morning, the storm had passed. It was replaced by light rains.

Having the day off reminded me of the snow days we always had in Michigan. And apparently typhoon days in China happen as often as snow days back home. I wonder what the equivalent of snow day sledding would be on a typhoon day …