I am currently travelling along the Vietnamese coastline. The aim is to surf without surfers in the ocean. To do this, I’m going to look all along the coastline and explore the surf spots. There are already some known surf spots in Vietnam, but these are few and far between, and the country has very little information on surfing. Surfers are also limited; the number of local Vietnamese surfers who surf all year round is still quite small. Surfing in Vietnam has just started and is not yet known to the rest of the world.
The journey began about a month ago. Passing through from Mui Ne, I stopped at a place called Chi Cong Coast. I took a side road to Chi Cong Beach on my scooter. Then I noticed the sea. How are the waves?
What appeared was a mountain of rubbish. Looking ahead, this mountain of rubbish continued for about 1 km ahead. Mountains of piled rubbish collapsing down to the beach when the height limit has reached. Due to this, the beach becomes a carpet of rubbish. The eye is drawn more to the rubbish than to the waves.
I proceed in the direction of the peninsula ahead, with the Garbage Mountain on my right. This is a beach with an unusual amount of rubbish. I detected an unnatural feeling. I kept on riding my bike for a while, parked it, and looked at the beach beyond the rubbish heap.
The beaches are covered with rubbish and the sand is not visible. The sand and seawater visible in the waves is black. This is the first time such a sight has been seen. I can’t get a grip on this situation. I feel like I’m not allowed to be here, I’m not allowed to film, I’ve seen things I shouldn’t have seen.
People coming to the sea to dump and people picking up rubbish. Cattle eating rubbish. This place is used as a rubbish bin for this land.
Litter laid compactly on the beach. The rubbish is washed offshore by waves and tidal variations. Still, it’s a lot.
This is a so-called fishing town, and I don’t think it’s much different from the rest of the countryside, except that the beach is super dirty. But the dirtiness is not even half as bad as it seems. Only this beach is covered with rubbish.
River flowing into this beach. Styrofoam and plastic waste is noticeable. No doubt contributing to the dirtiness of the beach. Water is black.
The situation is the same a little further upstream. Dumping rubbish into the river or onto the shore is a simple act. Is this a local custom here? The result of disposing of the rubbish is that the rubbish goes into the sea and disappears, that’s all. After this I rode my motorbike down the maze of narrow peninsulas to see the people, to find out why this was happening./p>
Later, I asked a Vietnamese if they knew of any beaches here. The person said they did and showed me a VTV video on YouTube. This was a place that had been covered by a Vietnamese TV station and was well known to those in the know.
(Surf trip record: Chi Cong, Tuy Phong District, Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam – August 2019)
