I came to Vietnam on the 8th of January with the Ozone team and my first experience with Vietnam was really like coming to another world. There is a lot of people and they are all on motorbikes. They have nearly their whole life on the bikes, like the whole family or what seamed to be whole apartments. They all had their mouths covered for what I thought was because of the pollution. But when we arrived outside the busy city they still had them covered. So I wondered, and of course the mouth protection was not for the pollution but the sun and the sand. If you have a tan here, it means you have a bad job, like working on the beach selling things. So I did very well with my Norwegian winter tan, it seems that they are very jealous on that look, while we strive to only get some tan.

I spent one night in Saigon were there is 6 million people living, before we drove to Mui Ne. where we (the Ozone team) was going to kite, take pictures and film. I came from Norway with the winter flu, so the first day was not great for me. The wind was light when I came down but that is perfect for me, my body was screaming for a rest after 36 hours travelling. Mui ne is a 4 hour drive from Saigon, and it’s like Cabarete just bigger… stores, restaurants and food places packed in one street. And a lot of moto taxis driving around.

The people here are nice. They help you with everything you need. And if they don’t speak English then they try the best they can and point and draw to make you understand. I have to mention the food. WOW… how many strange things they eat; frog, lizard, snake and I can go on and on…. but it’s funny to taste. To ordering the Whole Lizard was a strange feeling, and then afterwards seeing them climbing up the wall.

Everything is also really cheep here, To go for a massage is 80.000 dong. Which is 5 dollars for one hour. If you are eating and drinking at a nice restaurant it’s like 70.000 dong which 4 dollars. So you can live cheep down here. That’s perfect for me.

I have been to a few different markets down here. It’s funny to walk around and see all the things they are selling. There’s a lot of nice things but also much stuff that is not nice. I wonder how they can sell all these things since there is so much of everything. And also I wonder how so many people can sell the same thing, can that be a good business?

But I am here to kite so let’s talk about that. In Mui ne the wind has not been too nice. The wind has been here but just not enough to kite. The Ozone team made a trip to turtle island (it’s called this because the island looks like a turtle) which is 20 min in a car from Mui ne. There we had a very good day of kiting. I was testing the new Ozone ’08 kites. And I can tell you I had a very nice day on the water.

We also took a 3 hour trip north from Mui ne to a place called Phan Rang. Two people here in Mui Ne found this spot after many months looking for a new kite spot.  It’s a military area so you need permission to go in to the area. We got in…Thanks to Twan and Antheny.

It was a paradise coming up there. It was sunny, windy and nice water and the spot was just waiting for us to kite. We were filming, taking pictures and testing out the Ozone kites. It was my best day for a while. We decided to stay there for 3 days and that was a wise choice. It was windy and sunny every day and it was just nice to kite with only my board shorts again. Wow what a nice feeling.

More from Vietnam will come soon.
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