winter and travel agents

Don't, I repeat DON'T come to Hanoi in winter. The city itself is fine, but part of the north of Vietnam is all the outdoorsy things you can get up to in the countryside. There are lots of trekking opportunities in Sapa on the border with China, but I never intended to do that.

What I did and do intend to do is visit Halong Bay (on a cruise) and Cat Ba Island while I'm out there. All teh travel agents around town are selling tours and they all feature lines like "snorkelling" "relaxing beaches" "swimming". Well let me tell you, I'm not going swimming in the ocean when it's 10 degrees out. Whenever I ask them what we'd do instead, they don't really have an answer so to end teh awkward silence I usually throw in "read?" Then they nod enthusiatically.

So basically I am now just trying to decide exactly WHAT I want to do on my grand tour of the bay. I think something that has more land based activities makes a bit more sense.

Choosing is not as easy as you might think...travel agencies are, let's say available. Like every third storefront in some places. On top of this you get a lot of copycats...one of the agencies is called teh Sinh Cafe, I say one but in actual fact about 50% of all the cafes I've seen have Sinh Cafe on their signs. People worry about copyright infringement in ASia??? Well if you can't keep people from taking others store names, good luck telling them not to burn a CD...which they also do in abundance.

So I have to pick a tour that I like, then make sure I am at an agency that isn't going to totally mess me over. Uggh.

And back to the winter thing. When I was looking at some pictures today I noticed the brightness of everything, I guess sunlight has a tendency to do that. Everyone frolicking in the summer sun makes the whole trip that much more appealing. Oh well, I'm here now and it's winter, and I have been assured at least hot water is available wherever I'll be staying so I'll have to make do.

Speaking of the sun, it crept out from behind the clouds today. Maybe half crept, and it didn't stay around that long. Still the world became brighter, and everything in this city looked way nicer.

Come here, it's great, but come in summer...sure it's high season, but it isn't like I'm getting any kind of low season discounts so what's the point?