I mentioned a while ago that the rainy season was back.

For the last few days, the celestial taps have been turned on exceptionally hard. Yesterday, for example, the floodwater on one of the roads back from uni was up over Rufus's back foot pegs.

This morning it looked a little brighter, so we headed off to Pantai Trisik, passing drowned football pitches, over-full rice paddies, and a big, big river.

Pantai Trisik is another black-sand beach, pounded by surf, bespeckled with driftwood and other jetsam, and loomed over by a moody sky. Reminded us of so many New Zealand beaches.

Very photogenic. Especially the flipflop collections and the beachcomber.

But we didn't have long to enjoy the bleak but striking views before the rain fired up again. We biked a little further along the coast, but the rain got harder, and we decided to stop for shelter and hot tea (it's really ridiculously cool here at the moment) at a little beach-side complex.

Very melancholy, as such places always are on rainy days. My mind went back to my seaside birthplace, and the flocks of disconsolate, pacamacked, rained-out tourists crowding the "shelters" by the beach, or mooching round the shops dripping over everything. Or to winter holidays in Spain or France, when we would drive under grey, threatening skies past scores of shuttered villas, hunkered down against the storms.

At our beach spot this morning, a group of rained-out Scouts laid siege to the souvenir shop, and a few bedraggled chickens picked their way forlornly from puddle to puddle.

We decided to give up and go home at that point. Further beach exploration along that coast will have to await less determinedly rainy times.