The tide brings in plenty of garbage in Da Nang

I was on the beach earlier today meeting some friends for some rainy volleyball when I encountered what the ocean had washed in the night before.

For the most part, Da Nang does a pretty great job pretending as though the beaches are clean here but on days like the past two where the cleaning crews have been off duty because of recent storms, we get to see what the beach actually would look like if it wasn't constantly maintained by, well, whoever is in charge of that.

The natural debris isn't that bad. It is just coconut husks, leaves, and various other detritus from the ocean. The problem is when you look a bit closer and see what the oceans of Vietnam are actually like.

I don't know what it is with people and littering, especially when they are either visiting a place that they chose for its natural beauty, or are residents of a place that has tourism money coming in specifically because it has natural beauty. Virtually everyone on this side of the river/ sound works in tourism, so needless to say their income depends a great deal on the beach not being like this.

It doesn't often look like this because this plot of land lies in front of a rather expensive resort and they are open for business so the fact that this isn't cleaned up is surprising to me. I know that if I was paying several hundred dollars a night for a room on the beach that I would be very upset if this was the state of the beach outside of my place.

It is low season right now, or at least entering it, yet this is really the only time I have seen this part of the beach look this bad.

Even if they do clean it up this is kind of an ominous sign for what the oceans in Vietnam are like. It is fairly common knowledge that Vietnam is one of the largest contributors to pollution of any country in the world and I don't know if they just don't care, or if they don't have the financial resources to do anything about it.

Either way, this is quite sad... don't you think?