Rain, Rice, and the Road to Sungai Petani

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSlept like something that had earned it — properly, blessedly deep, the sort of sleep that makes you suspicious of yourself the next morning. No idea what triggered it. Possibly just the accumulated debt of the last few weeks finally being called in.

Woke to rain. Not the dramatic tropical kind that arrives, makes its point, and leaves, but the patient, all-morning variety that seems to have settled in for the long haul, more houseguest than weather event. Breakfast came with it as a soundtrack — that particular hush that rain puts over a room, cutlery a little quieter, conversation a little slower. There's something almost indulgent about eating while it pours outside and you're not required to be anywhere near it.

We weren't, for a while. The morning had no urgency built into it, so we let it have none. Coffee, the rain doing its thing beyond the glass, that unhurried stretch of time before a journey where you're technically getting ready but mostly just sitting with the idea of getting ready. Eventually the day insisted, and we set off for Sungai Petani.

The drive had that grey, washed-out quality rain gives to a landscape — paddy fields blurring past in shades of green that all rain seems to bring out, whether you asked for it or not. We were headed to see Teh, and it was the kind of visit that needed no agenda beyond itself. They looked well — genuinely, which is always a small relief you don't realise you were carrying until it lands. Conversation did what it does with people you're fond of and don't see often enough: picked up as though the gap hadn't happened, filled in what had, and left plenty unsaid because it didn't need saying.

Back at the hotel, the boys had opted to stay in — their own quiet rebellion against the itinerary, and fair enough. Evening arrived with canapés first, the sort of small, deliberate bites designed to make you suspicious of your own appetite for the buffet that inevitably followed. It did follow, and it was generous in the way hotel buffets are generous — too many good options, none of which you can do proper justice to, all of which you try anyway.

After that, nothing much. Which was rather the point. We settled into the hotel for the evening, no plans beyond being comfortable, the rain presumably still going about its business somewhere outside. Some days are built for motion. This one was built for its opposite — sleep, breakfast, a familiar face, a full plate, and a room that asked nothing further of us. I'll take that arrangement most weeks, if offered.