Life Line
- Dec 18, 2021

#36 Nida Soe 🇲🇲 - Leading the first wave of surfers in Myanmar

Listen to Nida Soe just below or on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

🇲🇲 Nida Soe is a surfer who led Myanmar’s first-ever surfing delegation at the South East Asia Games in 2019.

🌊 As her surfing journey built her confidence and created so many opportunities, she believes that surfing can help the youth connect with their power of action and co-founded the Surfing Association of Myanmar to fulfill her mission.

🏄 She dreams to build a professional surfing ecosystem in Myanmar through which the youth can learn the values of hard work, develop their resilience, connect with nature, get exposed to new opportunities, and become professional athletes.

💪 She shares how she organized the first surfing trainings in Myanmar, how she can identify the best surfing spots with Google Earth, how she collected half-broken surfing boards from all around the world and how she prepared the national surfing team for the SEA Games.

Hope it makes you keen to start your own surfing journey! :D

🎤 “There are a lot of kids who want to surf, but I can't bring back that many boards. And I can't afford to buy 200 boards either. So I just bring back whatever I can get. If my friends have half-broken boards, I tell them to connect it and I'll take it. So we have a bunch of half-broken boards!

But the kids from the village enjoy it and they started surfing a lot, even when I'm not there. And they started getting really good. So we hosted this national championship where all the kids from the village were invited and the winners of this competition will be selected to go to training camp for the SEA Games. So it was me and 5 boys. I was the older person, so I was competing, I was helping, I was finding apartment for them, I was figuring out who's going to feed them.

I called my friend from Los Angeles: ‘hey, we have a national team, but we don't have money to hire a coach. Do you want to be our coach?’ He flew over from LA. We all went on an adventure together, a 7-month training program before the SEA Games. That’s the journey”.

❤️ TIMELINE:

10’ - Discovering new surfing spots in Myanmar with Google Earth

15’ - Growing up as an athlete

27’ - Choosing between the national basketball team or pursuing university

34’ - Learning surfing the hard way on California’s beaches

49’ - Training the first wave of surfers in Myanmar

62’ - Representing Myanmar at the South East Asia Games 2019

88’ - Surfers’ connection with the oceans and the environment

106’ - Helping people understand complexity through data with Thibi

🗒️ REFERENCES:

About the Surf Association of Myanmar.

About the startup Thibi.