After doing some research on the Internet, we decided to join the Surfpoint Kitesurfing School. We did not regret our choice: these guys were absolutely great! They helped us negotiate a price with the hotel, organized and invited us to some parties and dinners, and even invited us out for their company Christmas photo! They really went all out in making us feel more than welcome in Mui Ne.
There are SO many Kitesurfing schools in Mui Ne. If you're looking for one, we highly highly recommend Surfpoint (http://www.surfpoint-vietnam.com/). The 3 guys that run the place (Peter, Phong, and Adam) are awesome and were one of the key reasons why we enjoyed our stay here so much. We are even thinking of coming back in the spring (after we finish our Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia loop).
They where excellent and super chill when it came to the kitesurf lessons - we didn't have to preselect / prepay a specific package, or stick to a fixed schedule (ie. if the conditions were bad, they'd happily reschedule for the next day). We basically just started our lessons and once our instructor was satisfied that we could go safely on our own, the lessons ended and we were just charged for the lesson hours at the end.
Typical kitesurf lessons begin with about 2 hours of land training as learning to control the power and direction of the kite is key to being able to get up on the board.
Once you can (mostly) control the kite, it's time to get into the water. You learn to "bodydrag", which basically involves controlling the power of the kite such that it drags your body along through the water.
The last step is to add the board to the mix. We learned to position ourselves and figure out the right amount of power needed to lift ourselves out of the water, just enough so that we can stand up and the board can begin gliding along the surface. We also quickly learned that too much power or losing control of the direction results in a nice yank and face plant into the salty sea :).
It took us about 12hours of lessons (each) before being able to stand up and go on our own... and we are still at a beginner level! But we both had SO much fun learning something new and recommend it to all sports enthusiasts out there!
Here's a short video to give you an idea of what we managed to accomplish after our 12 hours of training… we are definitely far from doing any backflips! ;)
And here are 2 pictures of one of the kite school owners (Peter) to give you an idea of what you can do with a kite. There are some pretty crazy tricks that the advanced kitesurfers can do! They happened too fast for us to catch any good photos, but it sure made for some enjoyable spectating while we were sipping drinks at the beachside bar :).
