So far

The heat, which hits you when you step out of buildings, out of cars, from the air-conditioned cool, hits you like walking into a sauna, water just thrown onto the coals, the air warm and woody. 

Butterflies as big as small birds, birds as small as butterflies.

Swimming in the pool, flame tree above, red flowers, green leaves. Dragonflies which dip and hover. Long legged white birds flying overhead, in formation. Must buy a bird book. 

Must buy a flower book too, because for the first time in my life, my mother's daughter, I no longer know the plants instinctively, can no longer say, snowdrop, lily-of-the-valley, pansy, ranunculus. I can say with conviction hibiscus, oleander, tentatively frangipani, but then there are the giant, star-like almost jasmine, and the bright yellow flowers which look like a child's drawing, cartoonish in quality, the pom poms of red and orange outside my front door, the creeping feathery vine that closes its leaves upon touch, and I am lost in the unfamiliar.

Lizards which dart from light to shade, and then are still, watching. 

Papaya and pineapple, stacked for sale on the roadside, bunches of blackening bananas. New types of fruit, the mangosteen, reddish purple, a new taste, but close to lychee.