Call me old fashioned but the things I like to have on the beach are sand, ocean-water, and maybe some deck chairs. That's ALL that I want out there. I don't need speakers, events, shows, or in this case art installations or something that is intended to get people to put on Instagram. I like nature, sue me. One of the things that I find irritating about this beach and I suppose all beaches around the world is that they feel this rather insane need to change the dynamics of the beach so that people are going to put it online and do some tourism marketing free of charge.
The sad thing about this in my mind is that I am part of a dwindling populace as most of the people that visit here seem to embrace this sort of crap and I just don't get it. Doesn't the natural beauty of the beach inspire you enough? Do we really have to have a constantly rotating cycle of crap that we put out there in order to get people to enjoy it?
I have been going to beaches my entire life whenever I could and now that I live at one, for the first time in my life, I am privy to the always cycling installations that they put up here and to me it is just frustrating.
It's the middle of the day in this shot. It is extremely hot so there aren't many people around but trust me when I say that this sign will be surrounded by hundreds of people taking photos by evening time. This is why I say that even though I hate it, it serves its purpose but to me it just makes me think that most of the world's population has gone down a road that I consider to be extremely stupid. We are so obsessed with getting our picture out there to be admired by friends and family or even strangers, that we probably don't take the time to enjoy the actual environment that we are in.
Nearby the "I love Da Nang" letters there is a wind farm of sorts and I guess this isn't a complete eyesore until you consider what is going to happen to these things once it isn't new anymore. Vietnam has an atrocious record as far as waste management is concerned so when they build things that are temporary out of materials like this, I can't help but think that thy will be disposed of in a very irresponsible manner. The metal things aren't that bad because they can probably be recycled or repurposed but the letters on the sign nearby them are all made of plastic, which is unlikely to be reused.
There's also this thing, which has likely been photographed and put on mostly Korean IG statuses hundreds of thousands of time and when the person puts their tags in I guess the idea is to convince people to come and visit DaNang. I don't really use IG, but perhaps I will walk a km in either direction from this carefully maintained stretch of beach and #danang the piles of garbage that washes in from the ocean that just ends up sitting there since nobody uses those beaches for tourism.
No before I whine too much I want to show you an installation that I am ok with.
This is made of cement and is clearly meant to stay there for a long time, perhaps permanently. People might be less likely to photograph this one though because it isn't directly on the sand. But you don't just go building things out of cement and then take them down and toss them out a month later. These beach installations are rarely there longer than a few weeks.
For me I just want the beach to be nature. Is that really so much to ask?