KTA Vietnam 2012

so we actually made it back to Vietnam again this season. Even though it is unbelievable that it is not possible to find a sponsor for an event there, when u have hundreds of new resorts and hotels popping out of the sand, so we had to pay it out of the pocket.
Before i went to Mui Ne i spent some days in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh... whatever u prefer to call it.
I had a typical tourist day, got a motorbike driver and told em to get me around town to see some nice places.

My tour started off wt the War museum which is really worth a visit, wt hundreds of original photographs taken during the war. U can actually see the other side than what u see from Hollywood.
After that i went to a chines temple and some Buddhist temple and i finished my day off wt a visit to a local market wt the most amazing food around town. After all it was good to see something else than only Mui Ne.

The event was freestyle and Oldskool mainly due to the low budget and Mui Ne wt is 2m shore break not really a good spot for course racing.
Ones again the wind was not playing game wt us... it looks like this spot doesn't like the KTA, only one day of wind during the whole competition again.
Since i called the skippers meeting an hour earlier than usual, we managed to get ready and start the freestyle at 10AM already, which is very unusual for Vietnam.
We had 4hours of freestyle ahead of us, and since the forecast didn't look promising we knew that is all or nothing for today. do as much as we can in one day. So after four long hours of watching the freestylers doin their tricks we changed over to the Oldskool, which is all about getting airtime and spin and do some funny things wt ur board up there.
We also managed to finish the singles of oldskool and decided to also try and squeeze the hangtime in. All the riders that were still on the beach went out on the water again to get their best times on the judges stopwatches.
That was a very exhausting day for the riders and the judges, but the cold beer after all tasted even better.

Vietnam is still a good spot for some good food, and usually strong wind kiting, but definitely not my preferred spot, too choppy to learn new tricks. All tho the best local restaurant has become a bit too touristic and the waiters are mostly children that run away as soon as they don't understand what u would like to order. The loosing face kinda thing that is very common in Asia.
The worst experience was when the waiter obviously had a cold.. and in the middle of take the orders he bowed forward and sneezed under our table, wiped his nose off with his hand and kept on taking orders.. and we new exactly that he will not wash his hands before he will start to serving the food... yummie.

We went to the red dunes for a sunset of a  no wind day, which was good for a change of scenery and some fun in the sand.

Now i'm looking forward to some amazing traveling again. Next up in two days will be Thailand again, all the rest of my travel list is not confired yet... but it will soon.. i hope ;-) - Vigan up north here in the Philippines, Pingtan Island in China,  Sri Lanka, Dubai, Oman, Australia and cook island.. in the south pacific... one of the bucket list for sure. The two last ones are confirmed... if lucky i might made it back to Switzerland in August this year.. but who knows...

keep on living the life!!
xoxo