Honeymooning around the world: Phan Rang: The sunny and windy town without sun or wind ;)

We had a lovely two weeks in Hoi An but now it was time to go to Phan Rang (Thap Cham), the city of sun and wind. Yes, we were going there for a week long kitesurf camp! 😎 Markus had ordered already in Cambodia a new kite board from Core Kites. FedEx was delivering it but they are not that good at delivering stuff in time. Markus' board had got stuck in the customs but FedEx told about it after it had been there already for 9 days... They told that Markus has to pay import taxes and that he needs a licence for some aircraft things because of the kite. Which kite? There's a board not a kite! FedEx was supposed to deliver it to Hoi An but failed, so Markus gave a new address to Phan Rang. He started to be fed up with FedEx! He thought: "Let's hope it is there when we arrive in the evening."

Local fisherman is happy about the no-wind-day

We had an 11 hour trip by train to Phan Rang from Da Nang. We asked from Azumi Villa if we could get some fruits with us for snacks for the long trip and they made us a snack box with fruits! When the train came, we went to our berth and we noticed that we had bought sleeping places! 😂 Well, that was a nice surprise! It was an 11 hours trip so to be able to lie and take a nap was a nice bonus. We were prepared and had our sweaters and pants close. The AC in the train was strong enough and at some point it started to get a bit cold. We watched few movies, Edda wrote on the blog and just watched the views from the train window. It was much nicer than a bus.

Watching a movie on the train

When we finally arrived to Phan Rang, a taxi driver was waiting for us with a paper with our name on it. The MinhDuc Guesthouse had arranged a taxi for us and it was nice, because it wouldn’t have been fun to start negotiating the price with the taxi drivers and trying to find the guesthouse late in the evening. We arrived quite late so we went almost straight to bed. We had had big hopes for sunny weather and wind because Phan Rang should be the sunniest place in Vietnam with also reliable wind almost every day. We didn't see any wind in the morning, but we took our stuff anyway and headed to Ninh Chu Bay Beach Club that had also a restaurant. We talked there with one of the staff member and he said that it had been raining the last 4 months more than the last 6 years all together but also the winds were messed up. He told that in May they should have around 28 days of kiteble wind. Well…that sucks, because there is absolutely nothing in Phan Rang except kitesurfing. It is a mid-size Vietnamese city with a nice but very dirty beach.

The next day there was some wind and we went to a public beach and tried to find a place where it wasn’t too dirty. The beach wasn’t the best for practicing because it was deep and onshore wind, so Edda didn’t try kitesurfing here. Markus had a light wind session and tried out his new board. Later on, we had local fans and few guys invited Markus for a beer and wanted a picture with him and later some local girls wanted a picture with Edda because they thought she was so photogenic as they showed on google translate when they couldn’t speak English 😎

Local boys wanted to have a beer with Markus

One day we went to see a Po Klong-Garai temple. It was a 30 minutes drive with a scooter. It was a quite small temple but it had a nice view over the city. It was on a hill so we could see to all directions. One of our favorite moments was when we saw a brown, blue headed lizard! It was cool! If we went too close, the lizard made its neck look bigger and spikes came out on top of its head. We had planned to go to one peninsula but it looked like it would start to rain a lot so we just went back to our guesthouse.

We had really bad luck with the winds but the kite club was nice, and they had actually quite good food as well 😋. One day we had some wind so we tried to go practicing with Edda. The kite dropped to the beach, not even hard, unluckily on a seashell that was broken and was really sharp like a spike... Shshshshshsh said the kite when it got a hole! Luckily we were at the kite club so we could fix the hole. During the fixing we met a Czech family who was living there for a year. They invited us to their home to cook when we had said that the kitchen at our guest house was really dirty.

Later in the day when we didn’t have any wind, we went to pick some trash from the beach. Well, we ended up to collect around 8 big trash bags of plastic from the beach and the sea. 😢 And this was a “clean” beach… We have seen all over Asia that the sea and environment is really dirty and full of plastic bags and trash. It is really a shame that the locals do not understand the consequences of their actions when they throw all the garbage is the sea and nature. Edda’s fingertips got a scrub and they looked like someone had been shaving the skin off. The owner of the kite club told that their workers clean the beach every morning but the winds and waves bring more. We saw also how the locals clean. They just take the plastic on can see, but not the whole bag if it is under the sand. If you cannot see it, it is not there! Yeah...

In the evening when we went to the Czech family, the man told us about different things about Vietnamese farming. He has seen and been involved in farming and he told that the locals are still using DDT at the plantations...!?!?!? They are also using many other insecticides and the farmers know that it is not good for your health. They have their own small "family gardens" where they do not use any chemicals. Smart! Locals had told to the Czech that they use chemicals because then the vegetables etc. look much nicer and they get a better price for them. The family told us also that when they moved to Phan Rang, the locals gathered many times a week behind their fence to look at them and to see how white people live. There's not that many white people in that region. 😅

Sight of the harbor on the way to Ninh Chu Bay Club

Wanting for the wind!

The first basket we filled in around 20 minutes

We had planned to leave one day earlier to Saigon because of the lack of wind. The last day we got ok wind in the morning but it was high tide so that Edda couldn't reach the bottom so we couldn't practice. Markus went for a session but soon he had to come back because really black clouds came from the mountains. Soon after he came back, the wind died totally and switched direction 180 degrees... Lunch time! Later the wind came back and Markus went for another session. The water was still high, and full of trash. Markus said it was the dirtiest place he had ever kited. Edda didn't want to go practice in the plastic sea, so we have to practice it when we get back to Finland. The water is maybe a bit colder there, but at least it's clean! Markus stayed there for 1,5 h. He got few high jumps and was testing his new Core Choice 2 kiteboard. He really liked it! In the evening it was time to pack again. We went also to Le Napoli pizzeria (the only one in Phan Rang?) to have dinner and buy one pizza for the next days train ride to Saigon.