Kitesurfing in Mui Ne

December 25^th-29^th, 2024

The Christmas morning bus ride to Mui Ne wasn’t bad, four hours and there were many empty seats.  We arrived in Mui Ne around noon.

 

I was picked up in this van, and wondered whether this would take us all the was to Mui Ne, but my ticket said that I had a specific seat so we were taken to the office of the bus company.  We waited there for a while and then all of us got back in the van, with no other new passengers.  Driving 20 minutes out of town, we then got on the proper bus.

These are known as "sleeper buses" here.  They should be called "recliner buses".  They are kind of in between of being comfortable to sit, or to lie down.  I almost wanted to go back to the little van!

Yup, my opinion of this bus...until I actually realized you could prop up the back of the "seat" more.  But I wouldn't want to take a journey overnight in one of these.

Some of the countryside.

We passed through an obviously windy area as there were a lot of wind turbines.

Some fishing boats on an inlet.

It got sandy as we approached Mui Ne.  In fact there are "sand dune" tours.  I didn't bother with one.

My first impressions of Mui Ne weren’t great, but it turns out that I was just staying at the wrong end of the beach.  In fact, where I was, there was no beach where I was, but instead a breakwater.  I went for a late lunch on Christmas Day at Nemo’s Bar & Restaurant, and there were only two other people there.  I wondered where the tourists were…

The Nemo Bar & Restaurant.

Working on some bookkeeping.

After lunch I walked along the promenade.  Lots and lots of the round boats.

Where's the beach to kitesurf?

This is the biggest round boat I have seen.

Happy Almost New Year!

This is the rush hour to pick up kids from school.  I was surprised that school only lets out around 4:30-4:45.

The following day I made an inquiry with a kitesurfing school called C2Sky Kite Center but didn’t hear back from them until later that day so I just worked on my bookkeeping and blogging.  Liz, the owner of the school, responded with a message asking if I wanted to “join the tour in the morning at 8:30 am”.  I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant as I had just asked about a one-hour refresh lesson since I hadn’t been on a board since January, when I barely finished my intermediate rating (and still consider myself a beginner).

I didn't notice this guy on my first day at my guesthouse, but they have a couple of these lizards in a cage not too far from the pool.  Strange animals to keep as a pet as they hardly move.

The start of a gorgeous sunset.

I had a couple of new friends at my table.  It's a mother and her son.

It got better and better.

Out for dinner at a food court.

It was a happening place.

In the morning, I located the school on a nice, big sandy beach with many resorts lining the shore.  I met Liz and was coupled with Polish instructor Michael.  We figured out gear, packed it up, and then I found out that the “tour” meant we were driving 2 hours north to try and find better wind as the forecasts supposedly didn’t look great for Mui Ne.  Sure, why not?!?  All part of the adventure, right?

Everyone grabbed gear and we hauled it through a resort to get to the truck and mini bus.  Once loaded, we started to head north, retracing some of the roads that I had travelled on a few days before from Nha Trang to Mui Ne in the sleeper bus.  The weather deteriorated the further we drove, and rain began to fall in the last hour of what turned out to be closer to a 3-hour journey.

On our way up the coast in search of wind.

But it got rainy...

During the drive, I met and had a nice conversation with Kris, who was from Lithuania, and he was on vacation with his wife Jurga and two sons, Mattas, 22 years old, and Naglis who was 12.  Pretty cool, all of them kite surf.  Jurga was still learning, but she was well on her way, close to my level from what I understood.

We pulled into a property which turned out to be a former kite surfing school run by South Koreans, but since Covid, they had not returned to continue their business.  Everyone took refuge under a sheltered area where there was a kitchen run by some locals.  We were there for a bit more than an hour, hoping that the rain would abate, and the winds then pick up, but it looked hopeless.  A few of us, me included, had some fried rice and then Liz and one of the senior instructors decided that it was better if we pulled the plug and head back to Mui Ne.  I couldn’t help but joke that it was a long way to come for some fried rice!

Where we hung out, hoping the rain would dissipate and the wind would kick in...to no avail. 

On the way back, I had a good conversation with Kris and a guy named Enrico, originally from Italy but working in Melbourne as a surveyor.  Getting closer to Mui Ne, near the end of the afternoon, I couldn’t help but check out the C2Sky webcam, and sure enough, we could see that there were some people out on the water.  However, once we arrived, the wind died off and everyone came in.  Additionally, the waves looked huge, more than I was interested in testing out with my first lesson in almost a year.

Arriving back to the main beach in Mui Ne.

It was on for a few kite surfers when we showed up, but not for long.  We were the curse.

I rescheduled for the following morning at 11 am.  Quong (pronounced “who-ong”) was to be my instructor, and he was excellent.  We spent the first half hour on the beach, talking about theory, flying the kite and I learned a lot during that time.  He told me a few tips and tricks that I was shocked that I hadn’t heard from previous instructors.  I’ve been going at this kite surfing for quite some time, but my problem is I have big gaps between lessons.  Regardless, I’ve had 5-6 instructors and Quong was one of the best.

The waves were even bigger than the day before and I was reluctant to head out into the water, but Quong seemed confident.  At first, I hooked up my harness’s leash to the back of his and he pulled both of us out through the waves crashing on the beach with the kite.  Then we did something I’ve never done before; he did a water start on the board while dragging my sorry ass behind him!  Even though the wind was strong, he had to work the kite up and down to produce more energy due to the drag I was inflicting.  After a few stops and starts, it was now my turn to do it, with him attached to me.  It was interesting for sure…and I felt I did alright.

Here's a video that Kris took of how busy the water was...

After 2 or 3 goes, Quong disconnected and let me go on my own.  My water starts were pretty good, but a few times I got going too fast as I planed across the water and then just launched out of my board and crashed into the ocean.  On one of them, I almost lost my swimming trunks!  I then had to body surf upwind to retrieve my board, which I felt quite good about as I was fairly quick at doing that.  I also had the wing land leading edge down in the water, and thanks to how Quong had explained what to do on the shore earlier, I was able to get the kite flying with no problem.

 

I had a few good rides and even tried to transition once (slowing down and turning back in the other direction without stopping), but it didn’t work.  On the radio, Quong who had witnessed my debacle,  told me not to bother trying to do that in these big waves…and they were big!  Running the length of the beach (we started upwind and worked back towards the school), he called me in and asked if I wanted to do another run as he still had half an hour before his next lesson.  My body said no, but my head said yes…and my head won.  I walked up the beach while Quong rode the board and kite upwind to the spot.

 

The next round I had some success, but I could tell that I was getting tired and also beat up.  We finished up our two-hour session and I was happy with the progress that was made.  At the school (small buildings for gear storage and a place to hang out), I met up with the Lithuanian family and asked them how their day had been.  Mattas and Kris had some good riding sessions, little Naglis went out for a bit but found that a 7-meter kite was a bit too big for him in this wind, so he called it.  Jurga did a lesson with Michael, but only worked on her body dragging.

Kris' son Mattas heading out for a session:

Now it's Kris' turn:

And my new Lithuanian family friends.  From left to right: Kris, Mattas, Naglis and Jurga.

 

An hour later, I left the beach to go and look for some late lunch.  Across the street from the resort was an Italian place so I walked in there and as I was about to sit down when I saw Maria, a Russian woman who was sitting near me in the mini bus the day before, so I asked if I could join her.  We chatted for the next hour or so, exchanging stories.  She is originally from St. Petersburg but has lived in the UAE for many years and works in digital advertising (her job was complicated…I kind of got it when she explained it to me, but I won’t try here).  Anyways, she was like me at the start with kite surfing, lessons here and there but not really dedicating a bunch of time to it.  Finally she did, and she said it makes a world of difference.  She now has her own gear and is enjoying it.  This is what I need to do.

My new friend Maria.

When I was leaving the school earlier, Liz asked if I wanted to do another lesson the following day.  With a bus at 2:30 in the afternoon to take me to Ho Chi Minh City, I could have squeezed one in, but I told her that I was tentative and I’d let her know in the morning as my guess was that I was going to be sore from the sensational wipeouts I had had today.

The next morning, I was right.  I had a sore neck, back, legs…yeah, no kite surfing for me today.  I found out from Kris later that day on WhatsApp, that the waves were even bigger than the day before and the school didn’t hold any lessons.  I had made the right call.

 

I hopped on the bus to the big city, where I will stay for a night before flying out to Con Dao Island for New Years.  I was staying at a place that was a 10-minute walk to the airport.  It was a decent hotel and I found a nearby Thai restaurant for dinner, which was fairly empty.  There happened to be an ASEAN football match between Vietnam and Singapore and the restaurant was showing it on a TV.  The only problem was that there was a big, open-air restaurant across the road that was filled with locals, watching the same game but on a different feed, which was about 20 seconds ahead of ours.  That meant it was obvious when a goal was about to happen…or not.  Oh well, it was a good Pad Thai.

Off to Con Dao in the morning!