For someone who doesn't live here and even for most of us that do, these seaworthy vessels seem a very odd choice for entering the water. The look like a giant cereal bowl, have no rudder, and from what I have seen they appear to be quite difficult to keep your balance in. Cultures are different though and these things apparently have been used for short jaunts in the water for many many years. Every time there is some sort of celebration it is customary to pull a few of them aside and let some local artists decorate them and put them on the beach for everyone to see.
The artwork isn't normally anything terribly awesome but I always look forward to when they change them out. Here are the ones I spotted during a meditative walk yesterday.
The recent Lunar New Year brought in the year of the dragon so it was expected that this would be one of the themes.
Which one do you like better? Personally, I think the first one is the better of the two.
Whoops! I forgot there was a 3rd one. I think they are all pretty good. I hope they were painted by children
If this was painted in the Western world someone would probably complain about it being "racist" or encouraging stereotypes but since this was done in Vietnam, by a Vietnamese person, those people don't get to complain. We don't do a lot of that craziness over here.
I sincerely hope that this one was done by children. It's not very inventive in my opinion.
This last one was my favorite one for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that they "almost" got the English right, the other reasons are because this country pretends to be concerned about pollution even though they have a terrible track record in precisely that realm and because I like the color scheme.
It shouldn't be too long before a majority of the tourists start to depart from this popular seaside city. While I am happy for the economic growth like any local I tire of everywhere being so crowded because of tourism. I am not even entirely sure what the high seasons are here but I was told that people start screwing off back to their own countries in a month or so because it becomes so hot here. I'm happy that people have jobs because of tourism but between the busses, the crowded sidewalks, and the noise, I welcome their departure as well.
If you are ever in Da Nang you will likely stumble upon these things without being told where they are. The beachfront boardwalk of sorts is a pretty nice place and unlike the rest of Da Nang, it is kept very clean and nice. Now if they could just get people to stop driving their motorbikes on the sidewalk.