I saw a tourist on the side of the road yesterday with a little hand towel over his head as his only protection from the extremely intense midday tropical sun. I see many tourists lathered up in chemical lotions or burnt red from overexposure however I rarely see one that isn’t a middle aged Chinese women that seemed to know that umbrellas are as useful on sunny days as they are on rainy days. When shopping for an umbrella I strongly recommend buying the best one you can because it costs our biosphere a lot less to make one good umbrella than it does to make three cheap ones. The same goes for most other daily use items so remember to buy better in order to use longer.

P.S. The best umbrella isn’t necessarily the most expensive one. I invested around 70 USD in a Blunt umbrella thinking/hoping such an expensive, sturdy, and seemingly well-built umbrella would last me a few years however it ended up lasting only a few weeks before the locking mechanism which kept the canopy open failed. To make a long story short I was able to get the original replaced and then replacements replaced a total of 4 times so I have experience using 5 Blunt umbrellas and 4 out of 5 of them were not worth half of what they’re sold for and I won’t be buying a second one. I only sent back one so I’ll see if I can get the 2 broken ones and 1 leaking one I currently have fixed and back into operation.