It's surf season in Da Nang. I guess

One of the things that sold me on moving here back when Thailand was not going to allow me to have visas anymore was the fact that this area was touted as having a bustling surfing scene and normally when an area claims something like that it means that they have some sort of consistency of waves. So you can imagine my disappointment when I got here, looked at the ocean on a regular basis, and saw something the resembled a lake more than an ocean.

I am not a seasoned veteran of the sport, but I'm decent and was hoping to get a bit better by actually living within sight of the beach that these waves are meant to be at. I was at a bowling practice session yesterday when a non English speaking Russian father told me, through his son, that he saw great breaks at the beach in the morning.

I had basically given up on there ever being any sort of surfable waves in this area outside of storms, so this got my attention.

I had to go up to my roof with the doggie friend to confirm this before grabbing my gear and heading out and well, this is one of the best sets I have seen in the ocean from this far away in a while. I'll admit that when I went up there I expected the Russian father to be wrong because I have heard this song and dance before and walked down there only to see nothing at all. A bit later I went down for a closer look

From one of the beach access points you can already tell that the waves are very surf-worthy and there were a ton of people out there on boards although you can't really tell from this angle. One of the things that made me even more happy was that despite the fact that the sun was going down and the town was finally cooling off for the day, there weren't a million people on the beach.

There was almost nobody there at all actually and this is something that rarely happens in Da Nang. Normally in the mornings and the evenings the beach gets completely mobbed with thousands and thousands of people that all want to enjoy the ocean but don't want to be in the sun. As a youth, this idea would have seemed very silly to me because the USA is a land of sun-worshippers and going to the beach to swim in the evenings would be something that we would consider to be a bit dangerous but that is probably because the waves tend to be more dangerous where I come from and we also don't have any lifeguards. Here they have lifeguards and that one person you can see in the surf without a board on the right there is just seconds away from getting whistled at for entering the water outside of the approved areas that are cordoned off and monitored by lifeguards.

This access point is called My Khe beach and it normally is just packed with people. You can see one of the permitted swimming areas to the left there and these places are normally just shoulder to shoulder swimmers and that is the reason why I have never actually gone swimming here despite having been here for years.

I have only taken my board out one time in all the years I have been here and it is still sitting in my corner of my condo. It took me too long while I was taking pictures and by the time I got back to my condo it was really close to sundown so I didn't even bother going back out. They do not illuminate the beach at night and as much as I like surfing, I also appreciate the ability to see what is heading towards me.

All i can hope is that these waves are here to stay and were not just some sort of anomaly created by a storm that I am unaware of.

In the meantime I guess you could say that I am just delighted that there aren't so many tourists here right now and there is plenty of open space for walking around or doing whatever you want to do at the beach. I also noticed that the sign letting you know that dogs are not allowed has recently been changed so that they are allowed but they just have to be on a leash. This is fantastic news even if there are no waves at all! Nadi will be getting some beach time in the very near future.