HANOI ROCKS -- Our Spring Break Visit to Vietnam
Apr 7th, 2011, 05:46 AM
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HANOI ROCKS -- Our Spring Break Visit to Vietnam
Following a 35-hour return voyage, we are back home again in Illinois after our week-long stay in Hanoi (including a long layover in Seoul). And what a week it’s been! As we sort through our trove of photos and refresh our memories of our stay, I thought I’d start posting this trip report in chunks at a time.
We spent most of our time exploring the Old Quarter and French Quarter of Hanoi, plus we took memorable side-trips to Ha Long Bay and The Perfume Pagoda.
ABOUT THIS REPORT
Using a standard, orderly, chronologically sequential trip report format to describe the experience of being in Hanoi… would just be wrong. Instead, this report will offer a mix of big-picture overviews, small-picture glimpses and random observations that (one hopes) will allow some sense of the place to emerge when taken together as a whole.
My daughter really wanted to name this report “We Didn’t Die Crossing the Street”. I thought about calling it “WWTBD? (What Would Tony Bourdain Do?)”.
ABOUT US
For those who don’t know us… my lovely wife and I are regular Fodorites, and we travel with our teenage daughter, Allie. Ms_go and I are in our 40s. This is the first time any of us has been to Vietnam. Japan is the only Asian nation that all three of us have visited; ms_go and I also spent a week in Bangkok a couple of years ago. We are typically 3-star travelers, value-oriented, love to go exploring on foot, and not really foodies (but we love to eat well!).
ABOUT THE TRIP
So, why Hanoi? Well, why not? We’d read good things. We were looking for an interesting destination that would offer a “different” experience from recent trips, which have included Scandinavia, London, Turkey and the Italian Dolomites. While Cambodia was perhaps higher on our list, we also considered the weather at this time of year and felt that perhaps northern Vietnam would be a bit more tolerable.
You’re probably asking yourself, why’d these crazy people go half way around the world for just a week? (Note, we’ve done worse… two years ago, we went to Bangkok for five days) Primarily, we were constrained by Allie’s spring break, and she’s at a point in school where she simply can’t miss any days. And we’ve learned that if we wait for that perfect time when we have weeks to enjoy the perfect itinerary… well, it may never happen.
Sure, there was the temptation to cram in as many things as we could into our short time there. We thought about Sapa. We thought about a side trip further south. In the end, we felt we’d get much more out of the trip, and appreciate the destination more, by taking the time to get to know one city a little better. And we were right.
ABOUT OUR GENERAL IMPRESSION of HANOI
There’s an awful lot going on at street level, all day long. Every 20 yards, the sidewalk is blocked by someone who has set up an impromptu kitchen or beer joint with a handful of tiny plastic tables and stools. Or a “parking lot” for motorbikes. Street vendors are hawking all manner of fresh produce, baked goods, books, fake zippo lighters, etc. And everywhere you look, dozens of people (age 10 thru 90) are zipping past you on motorbikes—often carrying large loads of produce, boxes of beer, or occasionally entire families (including small babies)..
Despite this being an ostensibly “communist” country, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city with more pure, unadulterated entrepreneurial capitalism happening everywhere.
ABOUT THE WAR
Hanoi has been there for 1000 years. That’s a lot of history. Not many people there today remember the American War, and the ones who do simply don’t care about it anymore. Seriously.
ABOUT CROSSING THE STREET IN HANOI
The first few times you try, you are certain that you are going to be maimed or killed. The next few times, you feel like you’re getting the hang of it (it’s not entirely dissimilar to the old “Frogger” video game, actually). After that, you just step off the curb and trust that things will turn out OK. And they do!
ABOUT THE HOTEL
The Hanoi Elegance Ruby is a boutique hotel in the heart of the Old Quarter, on a relatively small (and quiet, considering the chaos of central Hanoi) alley/street just a few blocks from Hoan Kiem lake. We can’t say enough good things about this place, and about the courteous and helpful staff. We booked a Family Suite which was amply spacious for the three of us and very well appointed. Breakfast was sensational, and included in the price, as was a complimentary bowl of fresh fruit left daily in the room and an in-room laptop with wi-fi for our use throughout the stay. The manager went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure our stay was worry-free, providing excellent advice and helping us arrange our daytrip to the Perfume Pagoda as well as our overnight excursion to HaLong Bay. He even had my sunglasses fixed after I dropped and broke them, free of charge. Honestly, I have only experienced this high a level of service once before, and that was at the 5-star Peninsula in Bangkok.
Here’s the kicker: we only paid $110 per night. Which brings us to our next random topic…
ABOUT THE INSANE VALUES
You want a splendidly delicious meal, including appetizers, mains, drinks and tax, for a family of three at a sit-down restaurant for about $15? Hanoi is your town. Everywhere we looked, bargains were falling from the skies. A funky-cool necklace with interesting ceramic pendant for Allie: $1.25 (she went back to the night market to find the same vendor and buy about 10 more for her friends). A beautiful scarf for ms_go: $5 or $6. An icy cold bottle of decent local beer: 50 cents. A 50-minute ride to the airport in a comfortable private car with door-to-door service: $16. And if you run out of local currency, almost everyone takes US$ as well (but you won’t run out, since ATMs are plentiful).
ABOUT THE CURRENCY
The conversion rate while we were there was just over 20,000 dong to the dollar. It’s actually more confusing to do the math in your head, on the fly, than one might imagine.
ABOUT THE STRANGEST EXPERIENCE WE’VE HAD IN A LONG TIME.
Thanks to the enthusiastic recommendation from a gregarious Irishman expat we met at the Museum of Ethnology (more on this later), we decided to book a daytrip with a private guide to Chùa Hương (the Perfume Pagoda). It’s a venerable Buddhist temple complex, including a shrine in a huge cave, a couple of hours drive (and another hour boat ride) outside of Hanoi. The cave shrine itself is interesting enough, but the real attraction is the journey to get there on a peaceful river through the heart of a splendid mountain valley. You hire a boat, and a strong young woman rows your party the entire way there. We had a private craft, but we saw other boats loaded down with as many as 30 pilgrims at a time. After you land, there is a steep journey up the side of a mountain which, fortunately for us, now has a step-saving gondola ride if you’re not inclined to hike up.
Here’s the strange part. We shared the river ride and the pagoda cave with hundreds of other people, and a significant portion of them were gawking at, pointing to and whispering about us. And by “us,” I really mean Allie. As a pale, blond, teenage girl in semi-fashionable clothes, Allie was nothing short of a rock star to some of these folks. All three of us encountered people reaching out to touch our skin and hair, apparently just to see what it felt like. Others tickled themselves by calling out the only English words they knew: “hello” and “thank you”. And when we responded with a hearty “xin chào!” it pretty much made their day. Our guide explained that many of these people had come to this site from far away in the deep countryside, and they’d most likely not seen people like us before. Not in person, anyway. Ironically, among the very few westerners we saw that day was a French couple who’d been on our Ha Long Bay cruise two days earlier (more on that later, too).
After visiting the shrine we walked down the path, past a few hundred vendor stalls, all the way back down the mountain and enjoyed a hearty lunch with our guide. And after lunch we took the same boat back to where we started.
There are quite a few negative reviews of this day trip on Tripadvisor, but in all, we found it to be a wonderful and scenic experience, and a very worthwhile daytrip. Reading those reviews in hindsight, I think that people who see this as all about the destination (the cave) might be disappointed; the advice we received to experience it as a journey, not a destination, indeed was good advice. Finally, I would highly recommend doing it the same way we did, with a private guide and driver and not in a larger tour group. I am positive that the extra expense (approximately double the cost, or $60 per person) was worth it.
Some preliminary pix from our Perfume Pagoda excursion can be seen here:
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p181947780/slideshow
More to come…
We spent most of our time exploring the Old Quarter and French Quarter of Hanoi, plus we took memorable side-trips to Ha Long Bay and The Perfume Pagoda.
ABOUT THIS REPORT
Using a standard, orderly, chronologically sequential trip report format to describe the experience of being in Hanoi… would just be wrong. Instead, this report will offer a mix of big-picture overviews, small-picture glimpses and random observations that (one hopes) will allow some sense of the place to emerge when taken together as a whole.
My daughter really wanted to name this report “We Didn’t Die Crossing the Street”. I thought about calling it “WWTBD? (What Would Tony Bourdain Do?)”.
ABOUT US
For those who don’t know us… my lovely wife and I are regular Fodorites, and we travel with our teenage daughter, Allie. Ms_go and I are in our 40s. This is the first time any of us has been to Vietnam. Japan is the only Asian nation that all three of us have visited; ms_go and I also spent a week in Bangkok a couple of years ago. We are typically 3-star travelers, value-oriented, love to go exploring on foot, and not really foodies (but we love to eat well!).
ABOUT THE TRIP
So, why Hanoi? Well, why not? We’d read good things. We were looking for an interesting destination that would offer a “different” experience from recent trips, which have included Scandinavia, London, Turkey and the Italian Dolomites. While Cambodia was perhaps higher on our list, we also considered the weather at this time of year and felt that perhaps northern Vietnam would be a bit more tolerable.
You’re probably asking yourself, why’d these crazy people go half way around the world for just a week? (Note, we’ve done worse… two years ago, we went to Bangkok for five days) Primarily, we were constrained by Allie’s spring break, and she’s at a point in school where she simply can’t miss any days. And we’ve learned that if we wait for that perfect time when we have weeks to enjoy the perfect itinerary… well, it may never happen.
Sure, there was the temptation to cram in as many things as we could into our short time there. We thought about Sapa. We thought about a side trip further south. In the end, we felt we’d get much more out of the trip, and appreciate the destination more, by taking the time to get to know one city a little better. And we were right.
ABOUT OUR GENERAL IMPRESSION of HANOI
There’s an awful lot going on at street level, all day long. Every 20 yards, the sidewalk is blocked by someone who has set up an impromptu kitchen or beer joint with a handful of tiny plastic tables and stools. Or a “parking lot” for motorbikes. Street vendors are hawking all manner of fresh produce, baked goods, books, fake zippo lighters, etc. And everywhere you look, dozens of people (age 10 thru 90) are zipping past you on motorbikes—often carrying large loads of produce, boxes of beer, or occasionally entire families (including small babies)..
Despite this being an ostensibly “communist” country, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city with more pure, unadulterated entrepreneurial capitalism happening everywhere.
ABOUT THE WAR
Hanoi has been there for 1000 years. That’s a lot of history. Not many people there today remember the American War, and the ones who do simply don’t care about it anymore. Seriously.
ABOUT CROSSING THE STREET IN HANOI
The first few times you try, you are certain that you are going to be maimed or killed. The next few times, you feel like you’re getting the hang of it (it’s not entirely dissimilar to the old “Frogger” video game, actually). After that, you just step off the curb and trust that things will turn out OK. And they do!
ABOUT THE HOTEL
The Hanoi Elegance Ruby is a boutique hotel in the heart of the Old Quarter, on a relatively small (and quiet, considering the chaos of central Hanoi) alley/street just a few blocks from Hoan Kiem lake. We can’t say enough good things about this place, and about the courteous and helpful staff. We booked a Family Suite which was amply spacious for the three of us and very well appointed. Breakfast was sensational, and included in the price, as was a complimentary bowl of fresh fruit left daily in the room and an in-room laptop with wi-fi for our use throughout the stay. The manager went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure our stay was worry-free, providing excellent advice and helping us arrange our daytrip to the Perfume Pagoda as well as our overnight excursion to HaLong Bay. He even had my sunglasses fixed after I dropped and broke them, free of charge. Honestly, I have only experienced this high a level of service once before, and that was at the 5-star Peninsula in Bangkok.
Here’s the kicker: we only paid $110 per night. Which brings us to our next random topic…
ABOUT THE INSANE VALUES
You want a splendidly delicious meal, including appetizers, mains, drinks and tax, for a family of three at a sit-down restaurant for about $15? Hanoi is your town. Everywhere we looked, bargains were falling from the skies. A funky-cool necklace with interesting ceramic pendant for Allie: $1.25 (she went back to the night market to find the same vendor and buy about 10 more for her friends). A beautiful scarf for ms_go: $5 or $6. An icy cold bottle of decent local beer: 50 cents. A 50-minute ride to the airport in a comfortable private car with door-to-door service: $16. And if you run out of local currency, almost everyone takes US$ as well (but you won’t run out, since ATMs are plentiful).
ABOUT THE CURRENCY
The conversion rate while we were there was just over 20,000 dong to the dollar. It’s actually more confusing to do the math in your head, on the fly, than one might imagine.
ABOUT THE STRANGEST EXPERIENCE WE’VE HAD IN A LONG TIME.
Thanks to the enthusiastic recommendation from a gregarious Irishman expat we met at the Museum of Ethnology (more on this later), we decided to book a daytrip with a private guide to Chùa Hương (the Perfume Pagoda). It’s a venerable Buddhist temple complex, including a shrine in a huge cave, a couple of hours drive (and another hour boat ride) outside of Hanoi. The cave shrine itself is interesting enough, but the real attraction is the journey to get there on a peaceful river through the heart of a splendid mountain valley. You hire a boat, and a strong young woman rows your party the entire way there. We had a private craft, but we saw other boats loaded down with as many as 30 pilgrims at a time. After you land, there is a steep journey up the side of a mountain which, fortunately for us, now has a step-saving gondola ride if you’re not inclined to hike up.
Here’s the strange part. We shared the river ride and the pagoda cave with hundreds of other people, and a significant portion of them were gawking at, pointing to and whispering about us. And by “us,” I really mean Allie. As a pale, blond, teenage girl in semi-fashionable clothes, Allie was nothing short of a rock star to some of these folks. All three of us encountered people reaching out to touch our skin and hair, apparently just to see what it felt like. Others tickled themselves by calling out the only English words they knew: “hello” and “thank you”. And when we responded with a hearty “xin chào!” it pretty much made their day. Our guide explained that many of these people had come to this site from far away in the deep countryside, and they’d most likely not seen people like us before. Not in person, anyway. Ironically, among the very few westerners we saw that day was a French couple who’d been on our Ha Long Bay cruise two days earlier (more on that later, too).
After visiting the shrine we walked down the path, past a few hundred vendor stalls, all the way back down the mountain and enjoyed a hearty lunch with our guide. And after lunch we took the same boat back to where we started.
There are quite a few negative reviews of this day trip on Tripadvisor, but in all, we found it to be a wonderful and scenic experience, and a very worthwhile daytrip. Reading those reviews in hindsight, I think that people who see this as all about the destination (the cave) might be disappointed; the advice we received to experience it as a journey, not a destination, indeed was good advice. Finally, I would highly recommend doing it the same way we did, with a private guide and driver and not in a larger tour group. I am positive that the extra expense (approximately double the cost, or $60 per person) was worth it.
Some preliminary pix from our Perfume Pagoda excursion can be seen here:
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p181947780/slideshow
More to come…
Apr 7th, 2011, 06:48 AM
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Loving the report! So glad you enjoyed the Elegance hotel. I've spoken with people who rave about the Metropole Hotel, but can't imagine it being as wonderful as our experience at the Elegance at a fraction of the cost. What a treasure to be able to travel with your teen aged daughter (who wants to be with you at that age!) and to build such wonderful memories. Wish we would have visited the Perfume Pagoda after reading your report. Hanoi does ROCK!
Apr 7th, 2011, 07:05 AM
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Thanks to all. I should point out that this trip report, and all the photos, are a collaborative effort with ms_go. Just like on all of our other trip reports, we work as a team.
I'm working on the Ha Long Bay recap right now, and I hope to have something posted this afternoon.
I'm working on the Ha Long Bay recap right now, and I hope to have something posted this afternoon.
Apr 7th, 2011, 11:31 AM
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ABOUT THE ONLY OTHER CITY WE’VE BEEN TO THAT COMPARES TO HANOI
…is Naples. They’re both huge cities with long histories and a gritty character. Both are notable for their chaotic traffic, narrow streets, vibrant street culture, flavorful but unpretentious cuisine, architectural diversity, warm climate… and a seemingly endless supply of motorbikes. They aren’t necessarily immediately grand and appealing like, say, Paris, but the more time you spend in both of them, the more you appreciate them and the more they grow on you.
ABOUT OUR OVERNIGHT EXCURSION TO HA LONG BAY (ACTUALLY, BAI TU LONG BAY)
We also booked this side-trip through our hotel, and it’s yet another thing they got exactly right. Some folks choose to make this a daytrip, which is do-able but (IMHO) not really advisable. It’s a boring 4-hour bus ride out to Ha Long City from Hanoi and 4 hours back, including the obligatory shopping (or toilet) stop, and then the most scenic and interesting places on the bay take a while for the boat to reach. So an overnight on the boat really is your best bet.
There are many cruise options for all budgets. We cruised aboard the Red Dragon (one of a small fleet owned by Indochina Junks), which is a small but well-run ship, and our triple-room was much larger and more comfy than I’d expected on such a craft. We enjoyed three meals on board, and they were all terrific. Joining us were a Chinese-Australian mom and her 24-year-old daughter (both from Sydney), a 30-something gay French male couple (who we met again on our Perfume Pagoda trip), and an older French couple celebrating their 40th anniversary. Allie relished the opportunity to fully engage her French language skills with our fellow travelers, calling this the “most intensive” French practice she’s ever had (including travel to France)..
Most cruises go to Ha Long Bay. The Indochina Junks (IJ) fleet, on the other hand, goes to the lesser traveled but equally spectacular Bai Tu Long Bay, which is also part of the World Heritage area. The scenery here is unlike any other we’ve encountered, anywhere. Thousands of small, steep islands and rocks jut out of the water everywhere, creating an otherworldly appearance. The strange seascape was accentuated by a persistent misty overcast much of the time. (Pix to come, eventually.) While we’ve heard the landscape in Ha Long Bay can get pretty crowded with boats, the area to which we went included just a small handful of IJ boats, which are all on the smaller side; one of them has just one cabin (the honeymoon boat!).
After lunch on the first day, we set out for a nearby island with a nice, sandy beach and a large, well-lit cave with interesting rock formations. There were also gorgeous views of the bay from this island, and we both almost sprained our trigger fingers from all the shots we snapped. Afterward, we climbed into kayaks and had a blast following our guide around some of the local islets. Just about everyone participated in the fun — and some of us got wetter than others (ms_go pretty much required a full change of clothes afterward)!
Back aboard the Red Dragon, we were treated to a delicious, multi-course supper. They were thoughtful enough to cook up some alternative dishes for Allie (who does not like seafood and is allergic to nuts) and the Aussie girl (who’s allergic to shellfish). Ms_go and I splurged on a decent bottle of wine, as drinks were the only thing not included in the excursion price. After an enjoyable evening of conversation, we all retired to bed and rested reasonably well.
The next morning, we set out for the Vung Vieng fishing village located on another island deep in the heart of the bay (Indochina Junks has been working with this village over a few years to improve its infrastructure and strengthen its livelihood). We interacted with the locals there, through our guide/cruise director, and listened while the adorable children recited their lessons in the little one-room village schoolhouse. If you’re going with Red Dragon or one of the other Indochina Junks ships, you might consider taking along some small school supplies such as pencils and pens (we forgot). But soon it was time to return to the boat and head back to Ha Long City, where our bus awaited. We made it back to Hanoi in time for a nice stroll and some dinner.
…is Naples. They’re both huge cities with long histories and a gritty character. Both are notable for their chaotic traffic, narrow streets, vibrant street culture, flavorful but unpretentious cuisine, architectural diversity, warm climate… and a seemingly endless supply of motorbikes. They aren’t necessarily immediately grand and appealing like, say, Paris, but the more time you spend in both of them, the more you appreciate them and the more they grow on you.
ABOUT OUR OVERNIGHT EXCURSION TO HA LONG BAY (ACTUALLY, BAI TU LONG BAY)
We also booked this side-trip through our hotel, and it’s yet another thing they got exactly right. Some folks choose to make this a daytrip, which is do-able but (IMHO) not really advisable. It’s a boring 4-hour bus ride out to Ha Long City from Hanoi and 4 hours back, including the obligatory shopping (or toilet) stop, and then the most scenic and interesting places on the bay take a while for the boat to reach. So an overnight on the boat really is your best bet.
There are many cruise options for all budgets. We cruised aboard the Red Dragon (one of a small fleet owned by Indochina Junks), which is a small but well-run ship, and our triple-room was much larger and more comfy than I’d expected on such a craft. We enjoyed three meals on board, and they were all terrific. Joining us were a Chinese-Australian mom and her 24-year-old daughter (both from Sydney), a 30-something gay French male couple (who we met again on our Perfume Pagoda trip), and an older French couple celebrating their 40th anniversary. Allie relished the opportunity to fully engage her French language skills with our fellow travelers, calling this the “most intensive” French practice she’s ever had (including travel to France)..
Most cruises go to Ha Long Bay. The Indochina Junks (IJ) fleet, on the other hand, goes to the lesser traveled but equally spectacular Bai Tu Long Bay, which is also part of the World Heritage area. The scenery here is unlike any other we’ve encountered, anywhere. Thousands of small, steep islands and rocks jut out of the water everywhere, creating an otherworldly appearance. The strange seascape was accentuated by a persistent misty overcast much of the time. (Pix to come, eventually.) While we’ve heard the landscape in Ha Long Bay can get pretty crowded with boats, the area to which we went included just a small handful of IJ boats, which are all on the smaller side; one of them has just one cabin (the honeymoon boat!).
After lunch on the first day, we set out for a nearby island with a nice, sandy beach and a large, well-lit cave with interesting rock formations. There were also gorgeous views of the bay from this island, and we both almost sprained our trigger fingers from all the shots we snapped. Afterward, we climbed into kayaks and had a blast following our guide around some of the local islets. Just about everyone participated in the fun — and some of us got wetter than others (ms_go pretty much required a full change of clothes afterward)!
Back aboard the Red Dragon, we were treated to a delicious, multi-course supper. They were thoughtful enough to cook up some alternative dishes for Allie (who does not like seafood and is allergic to nuts) and the Aussie girl (who’s allergic to shellfish). Ms_go and I splurged on a decent bottle of wine, as drinks were the only thing not included in the excursion price. After an enjoyable evening of conversation, we all retired to bed and rested reasonably well.
The next morning, we set out for the Vung Vieng fishing village located on another island deep in the heart of the bay (Indochina Junks has been working with this village over a few years to improve its infrastructure and strengthen its livelihood). We interacted with the locals there, through our guide/cruise director, and listened while the adorable children recited their lessons in the little one-room village schoolhouse. If you’re going with Red Dragon or one of the other Indochina Junks ships, you might consider taking along some small school supplies such as pencils and pens (we forgot). But soon it was time to return to the boat and head back to Ha Long City, where our bus awaited. We made it back to Hanoi in time for a nice stroll and some dinner.
Apr 7th, 2011, 06:08 PM
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Good reading. We'll be doing the cruise with Indochina Junks (same boat, I think) in November. Glad to hear you enjoyed it. We debated extending the Halong Bay visit two 2 nights, but it sounds like you were happy with just the overnight, which is what we finally decided. Thanks for the tip about bringing supplies for the school--I'll tuck a box or two of pens into my carry-on.
Apr 7th, 2011, 06:23 PM
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I've posted some photos from our Bai Tu Long (Ha Long) Bay cruise:
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p117716538
I haven't done much to caption these, but I'll work on this eventually. They look pretty "grey," but that's the way it was.
Here is the link to the Indochina Junks site:
http://www.indochina-junk.com/
We booked through our hotel (all handled months ago) at a cost of $165 p/p for a triple cabin. I probably paid a bit of a mark up, but the convenience was welcome.
aprillilacs, one night was enough for us, but that was partly due to the weather. As you can see in the photos, it was mostly cloudy, and we had a few raindrops here and there. It was also a little on the cool side (maybe 60ish F), so we really didn't want to spend a lot of time on activities that involved getting wet. Our cruise guide/director (or whatever his title was; he was very good by the way) said that was pretty much the norm for this time of year but the coming months would be sunnier and warmer.
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p117716538
I haven't done much to caption these, but I'll work on this eventually. They look pretty "grey," but that's the way it was.
Here is the link to the Indochina Junks site:
http://www.indochina-junk.com/
We booked through our hotel (all handled months ago) at a cost of $165 p/p for a triple cabin. I probably paid a bit of a mark up, but the convenience was welcome.
aprillilacs, one night was enough for us, but that was partly due to the weather. As you can see in the photos, it was mostly cloudy, and we had a few raindrops here and there. It was also a little on the cool side (maybe 60ish F), so we really didn't want to spend a lot of time on activities that involved getting wet. Our cruise guide/director (or whatever his title was; he was very good by the way) said that was pretty much the norm for this time of year but the coming months would be sunnier and warmer.
