International flight at 2 pm, aim to be at the airport around noon, pack up in the morning, heck…….there’s enough time for a surf! With the sun risen and a drone pilot ready to shoot a quick one hour tow boogie session, I zipped out from the dock at our house and set out for what I thought would be an epic session. All was going absolutely perfect until I fucked up and BANG! I got run the fuck over by the boogie as a result of negligence due to rushing. The controller switched from auto-summon mode to manual mode as I dunked it under water while swimming to my board. I’m honestly very lucky it wasn’t worse. At first I was wondering if I could keep surfing. With all the blood gushing out, I realized my session was over. I booked it home as fast as I could. Applied a bunch of ace bandages and headed for the closest ER. Kapiolani ER was rad. No line and out of there in under two hours. I actually made it back home to finish packing although Louise had already done 95% of it.
Since there isn’t a direct flight from Honolulu to Vietnam, we needed to get as close as we could with Hawaiian Airlines. In this case, it was to South Korea. Our family loves Korean food and in an exciting twist to the stopover, Korea has one of the better wave pools in the world too! But I had 29 brand new stitches that were put in 4 hours before getting on the plane! I know doc told me not to surf, but she already knew the reality.
You already know but Louise is the best, she booked me up front in first class and I lucked out and got it. Flying standby can be very stressful, but it can also be quite rewarding at times. This being one of them. With the merger of Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines, we are not sure how many more opportunities we will ever get to fly First Class and we’re hoping this merger doesn’t effect that. Challenge is, it most likely will.
Landing at night, after a 9 hour flight, we figured we’d grab an apartment close to the airport with ambitions to take the public transpo to the Wave Park in the morning. After grabbing some local Korean food we called it a night, it was around 3 am Hawaii time so the kids were losing it.
The next morning we were up early ready to go thanks to some solid jetlag. After checking the price of an Uber versus the public transpo, we realized it would be cheaper and faster to just grab da Uber. We headed towards the Wave Park but decided to stop at the local Oido fish market first to do some exploring since our reservations to surf weren’t till later in the day.
Fish Market pretty cool, but the visuals of fish in tanks and the occassional shark really turned us off, especially Zo. She’s really does not vibe with that. While in that zone I bought more waterproof bandages in preparation for the surf later that day. Once that was secure, off to the wave park we went.
If you want to experience the Wave Park in Korea, here are a few tips.
Make reservations for the “Advanced” setting ahead of time. Especially if you want to surf the right. We didn’t get to surf the right because it was booked out.
The intermediate wave looks fun enough, but we didn’t surf it.
The beginner wave was still too challenging for our kids. But they did let them surf it and Louise pushed them into a few. After missing a few waves and one solid wipeout each, the kids were embarrassed and relegated themselves to the inside zone they call the Bay. All good. Something to look forward to in the future as they get better at surfing and we travel back.
To get all your family into the park, they all need to buy entrance tickets. But if they’re not surfing, you can buy multiple sessions for yourself and have them use one of the sessions as their entrance…..I think.
There is a height limit for surfing. You gotta be at least 150 cm to surf but you can avoid this limit for your kids by submitting video of them catching their own waves. At least that is what we did and they were cool with it. Also, you might not need to rent a wetsuit. We were cooking in ours. This was September 30th. Boardshorts and a top should suffice for water above 70 f (20 c)
The area was kinda a ghost town. Lots of construction going on but no people! Of the handful of restaurants that were open, all were empty. There was a scattering of locals coming and going with their surfboards but everything else was like a surreal simulation that had not been populated with humans yet. I’m sure this will all change in a few years, but at the moment, in 2025, there was an eerie dystopian vibe. Regardless, we made the most of it, let the kids run wild, and truly enjoyed our time despite the odd vibes.
My conclusion on the Wave Park, hey it’s not bad! But it is also not great. As an avid surfer, the settings they allow the general public to use without booking a private session are lackluster and borderline boring. But as a beginner or intermediate, what a great way to quickly improve. That being said, if you need to hone in your hacks, I can’t think of a better way to get your reps in. In one hour you can get up to 18 waves if you have the stamina. I was absolutely exhausted and even ended my last session 10 minutes early because I was pooped…..and also I was getting a little worried about the 29 stitches freshly sewn into my flesh and the failed waterproof bandaids that were falling off. In total, I did two advanced sessions. The best wave setting they allowed us to have was T2, so aim for a session with that.
We headed back to the hotel for a solid sleep and then it was off to Danang, Vietnam! We chose to start in Danang because of the price of flights. It was half the price to fly into Danang versus Hanoi. These things fluctuate so do your research and be flexible. Once you’re in Vietnam, it’s easy to get around.
Our upcoming blog posts will feature comparisons from when we visited in 2009 versus now in late 2025, this time with kids.
Quick tip regarding Vietjet AIR, review this video and make sure you list your whole name, including middle name in the first name block of the reservation.
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