Another maybe counterintuitive fact is that (to a reasonable approximation) everywhere on earth gets the same number of hours of daylight over the course of a year.
Winter is… Sunrise at 08:12AM and Sunset by 04:00PM(16:00).
You can technically use this info to guesstimate my location ;)
The problem was that 20 hours of daylight, especially having 2:30 AM feel like 6:30AM. It was impossible to get an adequate amount of sleep. The paper thin curtains in the cheap hotel where I stayed did nothing to block out the light.
If I am ever in that part of the world at that time of year again, I will be bringing a sleep mask and seeking out a hotel with proper blackout blinds or curtains.
That's not an excuse to not provide black out curtains at a hotel for international guests, but I guess people just don't think about it.
Bonus, they now work as great blackouts in my home office for video calls when I do not want sunshine and clouds to change my green-screen effects etc.
> The whole "6am sunrise and 6pm sunset every day of the year" thing at the equator is kind of mind blowing.
Essentially in these regions, there are no real seasons. At least in the sense that many think of them. Things do change, but winter isn't that different than summer.
I know there are variances, but the scale masks a bit of what's going on. So let's look at London[5], Osaka[6], Auckland[7], Los Angeles[8] (often joked at for having no weather), Seattle[9], and Oslo[10]. As you can see, these are extremely different situations. It even has large effects on how people think about weather, time, and other things.
It's funny how what is so obvious and normal to some are completely different to others. Sometimes seeming as if we live in different worlds. In some sense, we do, and I think we often forget that.
[0] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/kenya/nairobi/climate
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/gabon/libreville/climate
[2] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/brazil/macapa/climate
[3] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/ecuador/quito/climate
[4] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/malaysia/kuching/climate
[5] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/uk/london/climate
[6] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/japan/osaka/climate
[7] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/new-zealand/auckland/climate
[8] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/los-angeles/climate
[9] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/seattle/climate
[10] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/norway/oslo/climateAnother mind blowing thing about the equatorial sun is seeing it above you! Where I grew up, the sun is never higher that 30 degrees.
The silver lining is that our longest days are often our sunniest.
Not the same amount of usable daylight though as the amount you have to waste to get a decent amount of sleep all year around varies by latitiude.
Weather is fun too, because it changes by +/- 3 degrees throughout the year. The heat makes my bedroom door expand. We had an argument with the housing developers because we had custom doors that didn't fit. But turns out it was passing all the tests when they ran it, and not in hotter periods of the year.
Movies about vampires in the Arctic Circle are fun but vampires at the equator would be more terrifying for the humans at dusk and for the vampires at dawn.