The beaches are getting a lot quieter as tourism dies down

We are about to enter the cooler part of the year here in most of Vietnam and in some places this actually feels like real winter in that they will even have snow. Perhaps this doesn't sound like a special statement to someone that lives somewhere that has 4 seasons but when you think of Vietnam you don't normally think of cold weather.

Where I live it doesn't ever get properly cold, but the weather is turning to the point where at night anyway, you can comfortably wear long pants and maybe even a jacket. This is my favorite time of year but it is also the time of year where tourists stop coming here and the beaches really die down as far as the number of people that go to them.

I don't think that this year's attendance was quite enough to be considered a recovery and there are going to be a lot of businesses that are going to suffer, yet again.

For a lot of people that live here, this is the time of year that we like best because the traffic dies down a lot and the beach is almost never crowded. I do think it is important that we think in a less selfish way though because after nearly 2 years of not being able to operate at all the places that survived the covid madness are really struggling and at least for the part of the city that I live in, the livelihoods of almost everyone is dependent on there being mass tourism.

Right now the weather is cooler and there is a much greater chance of rain every day. We've been lucky the past week or so as it has not rained at all but from the forecast we can see that starting in a few days we are in for a couple of weeks of never seeing the sun.

There's still a few people hanging out here and there but just last afternoon and evening we went to what is normally a very popular beachfront restaurant and bar and we were the only customers the entire time we were there. We drank all of their Tiger Beer so that probably made the staff and owners a little bit happy.

This has happened every year in that come November or so almost no one travels here and a lot of the hotels and larger tourist-oriented seafood restaurants don't even bother with being open. From my perspective this makes for a much more peaceful day-to-day life but I also do kind of feel bad for the thousands of people that are more likely than not going to lose their jobs again.

I would imagine they kind of knew that this was going to be the case when they took on the job though. I guess I should just put things into perspective and not complain about my life so much when in all actuality I have it pretty good. In the meantime since there is nothing I can do to change it that I will just support the businesses that don't close as much as I can.