Vietnam has treated us to some spectacular skies.  The atmosphere is delightfully fickle.  A vast expanse of blue, which brings punishing heat and humidity, can become a monsoon-level downpour in less than 30 minutes.  Rain can pound the city so heavily that every sloped roof becomes a waterfall.  Clouds lumber over the city, massive and ponderous, sometimes releasing a payload of water and sometimes just passing over silently.  One literally never knows what the skies have in store.  It feels like living beneath an Olympus dining table during some raucous feast of the gods.  I love it!

I had thought that Montana would always have the crown for the more impressive skies, but in Ho Chi Minh City, I’m constantly reminded why the sky is sometimes called “the heavens.”

A cloud tower given a halo by the departing sun

One recent afternoon I wandered out to our balcony and beheld this giant cloud haloed by the setting sun.  The sky slowly evolved into something even more stunning and perhaps just a tad unsettling.

Another view of the cloud, this time with a massive saucer-shaped cloud sitting silently behind it

The saucer-shaped cloud was a little unnerving, but we reasoned that if aliens came to glass the planet, a la “Independence Day,” HCMC probably wouldn’t be high on the target list…

The pictures can’t do justice to the sight.  At the top of the cloud, the fringes of a rainbow were peeking out through the misty edge.  We all watched silently as the approaching evening slowly wrapped the cloud in night.  Seeing such skies makes me remember that “awesome” comes from the word “awe.”