1 trip, 3 countries, part 1: traveling during a heatwave

Hello guys, I'm back from my holidays to three countries: Luxembourg, Germany and France. I love traveling and seeking new experiences and so I shall be sharing some of my travel experiences here. On this trip, I got a cheap flight to Luxembourg and this trip was all about experiencing small, quaint villages in the beautiful countryside rather than big cities - I did go to some places like Saarbrucken, Trier and Luxembourg City which did feel like 'cities' in that they had a sizable urban center but none of them had populations more than 175,000,  You can see all the contents of my trip on Instagram here. I was based in the little town of Merzig in Germany, with a population of just 30,000. I'll start off with one story that has made the headlines: I traveled during a terrible heatwave that shattered records all over Europe. Now my regular readers will know that I really hate this hot weather and ironically, I managed to escape the worst of it in London! 

So how hot was it in Europe? 

The highest temperature I experienced whilst in Luxembourg was 38 degrees however it did reach 40 degrees in London that same afternoon. Now such weather is relatively uncommon, it is lunchtime now: it is currently 22 degrees in London and 21 degrees in Luxembourg. However, this meant that most places did not have any air-conditioning at all - it was hard to sleep at night without air-conditioning and despite the fact that the temperature at night did fall to around 26 degrees, the houses in that part of the world are designed to trap heat, not stay cool. That was especially the case in the apartment I rented in Merzig. I found a lovely loft apartment which looked really cute but that meant that it was like a greenhouse in that heat. When we returned after a day of sightseeing, the temperature in the apartment had soared to 45 degrees despite the fact that we kept all the windows open. That's hardly surprising given that the lowest recorded temperature in Germany is -45 degrees and winters in Germany can get bitterly cold. Whilst hot summer days can occur, they usually don't last more than a couple of days at a time. So Germans would invest in expensive heating system which they will use for at least six to eight months a year and not air-conditioning, which they might use for no more than two or three weeks a year. Europeans usually just suffer in summer, they just grin and bear it when it gets extremely hot. I can see an argument for that: air-conditioning is expensive and consumes a lot of electricity, sure they may cool your room down but they are truly terrible for the environment. Sadly we'll become more and more reliant on air-conditioning. 

Can you cope without air-conditioning? 

You have to take into account of the fact that we're simply not used to such high temperatures - so far, 1,900 people have died in the last few weeks from heat-related causes in Spain and Portugal. These are two countries which regularly experience very hot summers but even they are unable to cope with the heatwave this year. But for a more comprehensive look at how heatwaves like that can be so deadly, let's look back at the 2003 heatwave where temperatures hit 38.5 degrees in London - the death toll across Europe then was 70,000 so yes, people do drop dead in this heat because our environments are not built to cope for this heat. A horrific example of this was the bus ride I took from Perl to Merzig in Germany when it was 38 degrees outside: the bus had no air-conditioning, no windows and in that heat it had become a greenhouse on wheels. The internal temperature of the bus was in excess of 50 degrees and the bus driver did warn all passengers of the horrific conditions inside - but as we were in the middle of nowhere in rural Germany, there was only one bus an hour and the bus driver didn't know if the next bus would have air-conditioning or not. That bus would be toasty and warm in the middle of the winter when you had knee-deep snow outside, but it was not built for 38 degrees at all. The surfaces of the bus were hot to touch, you simply couldn't hold on to the handrails and the air was hard to breathe. Everyone was drenched with sweat and I was particularly concerned about an elderly German lady who looked as if she was going to pass out from the heat. Under normal conditions, that journey would have been uneventful but that was the longest 40 minutes of my life. When we finally arrived in Merzig, stepping out into the bus station actually felt so much cooler - despite the fact that it must have been over 40 degrees in the bus station car park. 

Yucks, that sounds utterly horrific.

This is exactly why people die in Europe during heatwaves. The temperatures you hear about in the news are what is known as 'shade temperature', typically recorded in a Stevenson Screen which allows free passage of air but it is in the shade. So whilst the shade temperature be 38 degrees, we typically experience much, much higher temperatures if we are an area like a bus station, where there is the combination of a lot of asphalt, cement and bus engines can increase the temperature experienced by 10 to even 20 degrees. A study in Phoenix, Arizona showed that when the air temperature was 38 degrees, the temperature of the asphalt reached 55 degrees and the temperature of the gravel reached a shocking 74 degrees. This is because these surfaces can trap the heat after being in the sun for hours and you could literally cook an egg on some of these surfaces. So if it was 38 degrees in the shade, standing in the middle of the bus station that afternoon, I would be experiencing temperatures of between 48 to 58 degrees - so whilst 38 degrees may sound bearable to some of you, 48 to 58 degrees is where people can die if they don't leave that area quickly. To put things in context, the highest recorded temperature on earth is 56.7 degrees but again, that's shade temperature. Whilst we can survive short periods in even higher temperatures like in a sauna where temperatures can vary between 65 to 90 degrees, we always have the option of simply leaving the sauna and taking a cold shower to cool down. If you're working on a construction site in the Middle East for example, the temperature of your work environment can exceed 50 degrees on a daily basis and having experienced that in the bus in Germany, I think that's totally inhumane - I was simply sitting on a bus, imagine having to work in that heat but that is what thousands of migrant workers face daily in the Middle East. 

So why do thousands of people drop dead in Europe but manage to cope in other countries? 

There are two key reasons: firstly, in hot countries, they are better prepared for the heat. In India and Pakistan for example, yes temperatures regularly hit 45 degrees in the summer but at least their buses have windows. They also modify their behaviour to make sure that they make the most of the cooler part of the night. So in South-East Asia for example, school typically starts very early compared to the West. In Singapore, I started school at 7:30 am in the morning so I could travel to school in the coolest part of the morning and the PE lesson were conducted immediately after morning assembly before it got too hot. In Indonesia, school starts even earlier at 6:30 am. Contrast that to the UK, where school starts at between 8:30 to 9 am and finishes in the mid-afternoon, children will then do their PE/sports activities in the afternoon. Now usually that's not a problem at all if the temperature outside is under 20 degrees during - you can play football outside in the middle of the afternoon without breaking out into a sweat for most of the year apart from summer. But Europeans often refuse to adjust their schedules, habits, attire and activities for the summer - that's just plain stupidity and stubbornness on their part, which leads to death of course. They are literally dying of stupidity. When the temperature was 38 degrees, I saw people wearing winter clothing in Germany and I did write a similar piece when I observed people wearing winter clothing in tropical Panama. You wear winter clothing when it is very cold, not when the temperature is so high people are literally dying from the heat. There are very deadly consequences for their poor judgment during a heatwave: the heat doesn't actually kill people, it is in fact stupidity and ignorance that kills them. 

Are you sure it is just plain stupidity that leads to so many deaths? 

It is mostly that toxic mix of stupidity and ignorance but there are also wild fires as well - these are scary because they can spread so fast. This heatwave has been accompanied by a drought, so the ground is completely dry and the dead grass can be ignited by the slightest spark say from a discarded cigarette butt. Even if it rains on such surfaces, the ground is so hot the water evaporates almost instantly, leaving the ground just as dry and flammable as before and when a wild fire starts under such conditions, it can spread very quickly with deadly consequences, killing many people. But another major cause of death during these heatwaves is alcohol: when it is very hot, we will lose a lot of water through sweat and you will naturally feel thirsty as a result but if you consume beer under such conditions, then that's a bad idea as alcohol is a diuretic. That means it will encourage your kidneys to lose more fluids through urination. Alcohol will also make you sweat more, so the combination of increased sweating and going to pee more can accelerate dehydration. So the more beer you drink, the more dehydrated you become. Furthermore, alcohol could also make you lose your inhibitions and some people would go for a swim on a hot day after consuming alcohol but that's a deadly combination: drunk people make poor judgment when it comes to getting into unsafe bodies of water (like a murky lake or a fast flowing river) and can overestimate their ability to swim - even if they do know how to swim, that ability is substantially reduced when very drunk and thus all this has led to many drowning incidents on these hot days. Yes, I did go swimming on that extremely hot day, but I am teetotal and I did it safely at the pool in Merzig where there were life guards on duty. 

If hot summers are going to be more common now, would Europe invest more in air-conditioning? 

Well yes of course, it will become necessary: right now many of the newer buildings, particularly homes and offices built for rich people do come with air-conditioning. But many of us still live in older buildings which have to be retro-fitted with air-conditioning and that is all going to take some time. So take Seville in Spain for example where summers are extremely hot, exceeding 40 degrees regularly, about 73% of homes have air-conditioning as it becomes a necessity. 40 degrees has become normal summer temperature there and occurs very regularly every year so the locals feel like air-conditioning is a very sensible investment to get through the very hot summer months; thus many other European cities may soon follow suit, if heatwaves like that become a regular occurrence every summer, as a result of global warming.  

Is it true that white people love the hot weather so much and don't complain about the heatwave? 

There's an element of truth to that and there's a completely different perspective when it comes to hot weather - I'm from Singapore and I was brought up to fear the sun, to be careful not to bear the brunt of the hot weather. I am thus naturally cautious when it comes to hot weather whereas with a lot of white people from colder European countries, sigh - I go back to the element of plain stupidity. A lot of white people are ignorant of the risks of very hot weather as they don't often get to experience such high temperatures in Europe (it is just 22 degrees in London as I am typing this) and thus they are not brought up to be cautious during hot weather. When we have heatwaves in London, I typically see white people deliberately sitting outside in the direct sun at lunchtime, they may as well have "I want skin cancer and die an early, painful death" tattooed on their foreheads. It is a deadly mix of stupidity, ignorant and foolhardiness - when I am in Singapore, I see the locals cautiously protecting themselves from the sun but the white tourists would behave in a very irresponsible manner by drinking a lot of alcohol whilst sitting outside all afternoon. There's a genuine sense of novelty for them when it comes to hot weather as they only happens when there is an extreme heatwave or when they visit a hot country on holiday. It may take them a few years to develop skin cancer and die, that's why they don't see the immediate consequences of their irresponsible actions unlike Singaporeans, who live in the tropics and have to cope with the very hot weather every single day of the year - contrast that to the Europeans who don't often experience such hot weather.  

Are you being very racist in calling white people stupid when it comes to hot weather? 

Of course it would be unfair to treat all white people as a monolithic entity and some of them are better informed about the risks of extreme hot weather than others. But I'm not interested in being painfully PC when it comes to calling a spade a spade. When I was in Panama on a business trip back in May, I had a meeting with two British clients who insisted on sitting under bright sunshine when it was over 30 degrees - I insisted on at least placing my chair in the shade so I did not get direct sun on my skin. In the hotter parts of Asia, we do use a lot of air-conditioning so we do not have to sweat in the tropical heat and thus only poor people sweat in places like Singapore because they cannot afford expensive air-conditioning. That's why I associate sweating with low social-economic status whereas for these white people who live in cold countries, sweating is not something you normally experience - you have to go to a spa and sit in a steamy sauna to sweat or travel abroad to a hot country to sweat, that's why they don't really have that aversion towards sweating in the hot weather and do not consider it "low class" the way I do. In any case, human sweat smells bad - if you sweat when you're in the sauna, you get to wash it off at once in the shower. But if you sweat on a hot day whilst taking the bus, your clothes absorb the sweat and they begin to smell bad no matter how much deodorant or perfume you use. The only way to avoid that body odour altogether is to avoid sweating in the first place and I've met a lot of white people in the last few days who had serious problems when it came to body odour in this hot weather. Oh it was really awful as they stank like trash that has been left out to rot in the heat. People can smell so bad in the summer.

But there are loads of other countries in the world with very hot climate too!

Let's compare the UK to Nigeria - Nigeria is a tropical country with a semi-arid northern region on the edge of the Sahara desert and temperatures there can reach 46 degrees. However, the people in Nigeria have very dark skin and that melanin is a form of natural sunblock for African people who have lived in such hot conditions for centuries thus their skin is far less susceptible to sun damage. They have also learnt how to cope with such conditions and have developed many good habits to adapt to the extremely hot climate there. White people in Northern Europe in contrast have very fair skin and that's because they get very little sun here, thus they need that fairer complexion to absorb as much of the sun's rays as possible when the sun does shine. When a Nigerian person spends a winter in northern Europe, they just have to dress appropriately and they do not experience any skin damage. But when a fair skinned British person spends a few hours in the hot sun during the heatwave at 40 degrees, a lot of damage can be done to the skin in just a matter of a few hours: fair skin and hot sun are so incompatible and leads to deadly skin cancer. However, this doesn't kill you off in a matter of hours, it may take some years but it still leads to a horrible death. That's why some people still insist on smoking despite the fact that they know smoking could lead to a really horrible death by lung cancer: that death is several years away, so they keep on smoking regardless. But of course, skin cancer is the slow killer for white people when it comes to these extreme summer heatwaves, the deaths are far more likely to come a lot more quickly through poor decisions that irresponsible people make during these summer heatwaves, as we have seen this summer already.

But Alex, aren't you from Singapore where it is really hot? 

That's one fallacy that I have to deal with: people from the tropics don't fucking like the hot weather. I am from Singapore and I fucking hate the hot weather so much I moved to Europe. Urgh - I get so fucking angry whenever yet another fucking stupid white idiot says something stupid like, "you're from Singapore, you must be used to hot weather." Well go fuck yourself with the biggest cactus you can find asshole, that's fucking racist because I'm a human being: I experience hot and cold weather the same way any human would. When you put me in a sauna, I will sweat like any human would as my body reacts to the heat. When I take a cold shower, I will shiver as my body reacts to the cold water. These fucking stupid racist white idiots think I'm like some kind of alien creature from another planet with a different kind body unlike theirs - well assholes, I've got news for you: I'm not an alien and I've got a human body like you. People in hot countries have learnt to cope with the hot weather there but it doesn't necessarily mean they like it. The reverse can be true as well: in 2018 I visited my friend Kai's mother in northern Finland during winter as I love a proper winter. She was surprised that I wanted to visit northern Finland during the bleak winter as she loved nothing more than tropical holidays to very hot countries to escape the very harsh and long Finnish winters (which she really hates). And yes, she has been to Singapore and loves the weather there - the bottom line is that as humans, we often want what we don't have and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. She loves it when it is +30 degrees whilst I crave for -30 degrees. 

Is it possible to deal with hot weather by simply getting used to it like in the tropics?

No, that is not possible - let's be very clear about what we can and cannot do. Yes you can learn how to cope with different kinds of weather by changing your behaviour of course but you can't fundamentally change the way your body functions. For example, you can't stop your bother from sweating when it gets too hot as that's your body's way of trying to regulate your body temperature. Likewise, when you feel very cold, you will involuntarily start to shiver and your teeth may chatter, you can't fight it, that's an involuntary reflex. I have learnt to cope with the very cold winter weather here in Europe by changing my behaviour and dressing appropriately for the winter weather here. I've not developed some kind of super-human abilities that allows me to roll in the snow without feeling cold, I'm simply appropriately dressed to feel very comfortable when outdoors in winter weather. The problem with summer weather though is that you can't stop your body reacting to the heat when it is 40 degrees, even if you take off all your clothes you're still going to feel extremely hot and uncomfortable. How much you allow this discomfort to bother you would vary person to person, but you have to accept your body is going to react to the heat regardless of whether you are valiantly suffer in silence or complain loudly about the discomfort. Thus a lot of poor people who live in hot countries have simply learnt to stoically suffer in silence as complaining or protesting wouldn't make the awful discomfort go away, but make no mistake: those suffering in silence are still suffering nonetheless. They have not gotten used to the heat and they certainly don't like suffering in that heat. 

Please show compassion to those of us who are suffering in silence. 

Allow me to use an analogy to make my point about suffering in silence: I suffer from a degenerative eye condition which comes with age and this affects a portion of older people. Our eyes do start to fall apart as we get older and I am unlucky that this has happened to me in my 40s rather than later in my life: I have floaters in my eyes, which means that there are bits of tissue floating around the gel in my eyeballs caused by a process called posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). Doctors usually have no way to fix it and would tell the patient that this is all part of getting old, your body falls apart and you just have to get used to it. I can cry, complain, protest all I want about how much I hate getting old and for my body to fall apart like that but at the end of the day, I simply accepted that I have to live with this eye condition and get on with my life since there is no cure for this. I don't often talk about it apart from when I do comfort others who do have the same condition because I have chosen to valiantly suffer in silence. Just because I don't cry or complain about it everyday doesn't mean my eyes have recovered or that I'm 'used to it' - I still suffer everyday. I witnessed a young boy cry out to his mother, "mummy, it is too hot today!" He was expecting his mother to fix the situation, like take him to a cooler place like a supermarket or buy him an ice cream but as adults, we're expected to take care of ourselves and solve our own problems when we suffer: I have no one to cry out to like that young boy. I suffer in silence everyday and I have learnt to cope with my eye condition, but the problem hasn't gone away and I'm always reminded of it each time I open my eyes.  

Should I avoid visiting Europe in the summer if you guys can't hope with heatwaves? 

A heatwave is period of abnormally hot weather - the average summer temperature in London rarely exceeds 24 degrees and thus we don't need air-conditioning at that temperature. It was only two days when temperatures were around 40 degrees and so it is a question of luck if you do encounter a heatwave like that or not. Heatwaves can occur anytime from mid-June to mid-September but are generally most common in July and August. Even if you do encounter a heatwave on your holiday, as long as you behave sensibly you can still have a good holiday. Stay out of the sun, use sunblock to protect your skin, do not drink alcohol, pick indoor activities during the hottest part of the day and pay for more expensive hotels which have air-conditioning - behave in a far more responsible manner than the ignorant locals who don't know what to do during hot weather. Mind you, heatwaves can occur in winter as well. We once had 21 degrees in February and whilst that may not sound like the kind of hot weather we would associate with a heatwave, but the average temperature for February should be around 8 or 9 degrees only, thus 21 is a lot warmer than what was to be expected for that time of the year and thus it was considered a heatwave. Global warming has changed our climate and we are going to have to learn to cope with the kinds of extreme weather events that we can expect more of in the future. 

Okay so that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? What is the highest temperature you have ever encountered on your travels? Do you know the difference between shade temperature and the real temperature that you could experience when standing in a place like a bus station? Why do you think so many people in Europe die during a heatwave compared to much hotter countries? Can you cope without air conditioning during a heatwave when the temperature exceeds 40 degrees? If you're from a hot country like Singapore, have you encountered dumb white people who assume that you like the hot weather? Why do white people make such dumb assumptions about people from hot countries? Do you actually enjoy hot weather and if so, why? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.