It has been a while, but I really need to write down my Wind Surfing experiences. The Sports Club offered a beginners course for Wind Surfing in PD, and of course I wanted to give it a try. I made my first surfing experience about a year ago at the beach of Lacanau (France), and learned that it can be a really tiring experience and that you need to be quick and skilful. I was aware that windsurfing would be something different, only the fact that you are on the water on a simple board are the same.
Meeting at CP Tower to do some car pooling (Believe me, there are indeed some people in Malaysia, doing car pooling), we headed for PD. We stopped at some motorway service station on the way in order to get breakfast, and arrived in PD on time. The tide was not yet back in, so we had enough time to get ready for the water and play some beach volleyball for warmup (but this fun didn’t last very long, since the ball didn’t resist the hot air temperatures too well  ).
Before we could try to actually stand on a surf board in the water, we had to try and practice how to raise the sail on the beach. On land it is not really a challenge to do this, but you need the right technique. Afterwards in the water it appeared to be a little harder.. But the main Problem was to keep the Balance once the sail was put into the wind. During the whole day we had plenty of chances to practice this and eventually ride a few meters on the board. At least almost everyone fast the same problem (permanently falling into the water).
But it was still a lot of fun. We also managed to get a new volley ball, and had a few matches at the beach. So the day passes by just too quick, and we headed back for KL at around 6pm. But not without trying a Malaysian specialty – Durian. So this was the day where I would try that cheered up fruit for the first time. And guess – I didn’t like it very much… But I’ll post about that on Local Stuff.

Although many people would say that PD isn’t a nice place to spend at the beach I must neglect this view. If you don’t have much time, and you seek some rejuvenation from the stressed life in KL, than PD is just about an hour ago, and gives you chances for all possible beach and water sport activities. Of course given some more time you would rather head for a beach of one of the beautiful islands on the east coast like Tioman, Perhentian or Redang, but just in order to get some time of the beach PD is not that bad at all.

This entry was posted by Jürgen Hösch on Thursday, August 11. 2005 at 12:56. and is filed under Travel. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.