Dear sunshine, although I know you are always above the clouds and in my heart, where exactly are you at this moment? I miss you deeply and even when I’m inside watching TV, I still think of you as you’re busy making my flowers grow and my dogs sleepy on the warm concrete. I know we don’t always see ‘eye-to-eye’ in June when I hide from you and get annoyed with you when I get sun-burnt, but I still love you and need you in my life.

As central Vietnam has embraced March, I stare at the sky, heavily drinking in those moments when the clouds open for a while and the warmth sinks into my skin. Yet it’s not enough. Has climate change or huge upward shifts in the polar temperature pushed too much moisture our way? Was my sunshine dance too silly and awkward? Did the sunshine get angry with me?

I moved to Vietnam partly for the heat and the sun. As a little boy living in Malaysia, I loved the heat of the afternoon breezes whistling through the coconut trees. I loved watching the sky bedazzle me with a rich blue I could never copy with my school paints. As a kid I was utterly amazed that white clouds could actually glow with light.

When I lived in South Korea under permanently gray, polluted skies, I would go slightly crazy with so little of the sun’s friendliness in my life. Only South Korea’s cheap beer and school salary persuaded me to stay. I swore blind that I would never, ever, be cold or miserable again because my sunshine was being kept from me by a mean sky.

Even Sydney, Australia, where I spent 15 years, seemed to spend its sunshine like an old housewife that’s scared of losing her money, so she hid it under a bed most of the time.

Even the local pubs and cafés seem less populated and more subdued, unless football is on TV of course. Although the beach is still visited by the many tough, overweight tourists panting and puffing on their bicycles as they pedal past the poor farmers slaving away in the rice fields, it seems strange as they wear heavy jackets, shorts and sandals. I notice too that no one is staying that long in central Vietnam. The buses are doing a roaring trade heading south.

A wise tourist and expat knows the best thing to do is hit the luscious Vietnamese soups and HBO movie channel during the winter. Well...  it should just about be spring, but the locals buying the daily dinner ingredients at the markets look like South Pole scientists daring the snow to do another science experiment. I knew I should have invested in a Cambodian winter jacket production factory while I was there on my last visa run.

At least the book trade seems to be going well and I’ve upgraded all my blankets and pillows for those lazy, cozy nights holed up in the bedroom with a cold beer and a big, long book. Whoever the guy is that sold that electric heater to me four years ago in Hoi An, I want to shake his hand someday... when it’s warmer.

It does get surreal when I ride home past the open air coffee shops late at night. Returning from work, I see them all sitting on tiny red, pink and brown chairs watching football in snow jackets and sandals with their hands in their pockets as the cold wind pushes in. Have they even heard of socks?

Even stranger are the girls in shorts on motorbikes. It’s very attractive but I have no idea how women can convince themselves that it’s hot enough for bare legs when their boyfriends are wearing a scarf. Still, some older Vietnamese still own the old-style Chinese jackets, thick, quilted and colorful – now that’s fashionable. None of this torn jeans nonsense or hooded jacket with English words spelt terribly on the back.

Oddly, for all this unrelenting cloud cover, there’s been hardly any real rain, just a drizzle that fools us into stopping our motorbikes and rushing to put our raincoats. I worry about the effect on local farming. There was one brave man with a truck trying to sell Hawaiian shirts last week, just outside Da Nang on the highway, shivering in the driver’s cabin waiting for a mad customer.

So please, pretty please, dear sunshine, come back and make my life complete again. I miss you and I’m sorry if I said anything to upset you. If I did, I apologize – totally. Come back and make my heart as warm as the Vietnamese smiles I see every day.