Fun in Da Nang

We’d been through Da Nang three times on our way in and out of Hoi An before, but not spent any time there, so this trip we decided to make a stopover before hitting Hoi An again. Good choice! Da Nang is similar in character to HCMC and Hanoi, and given it is the biggest airport in the area, it sees a lot of tourism (so it’s pretty well set up for people like me who don’t speak much Vietnamese.)

We chose the Seahorse Tropical Hotel, which we found out on arrival is also an office building on the lower couple of floors, with a cafe doubling as the lobby on the ground floor, and a rooftop pool. It’s a nice hotel: friendly staff and a good location near the river but not too near. It had a great view from our room on the top floor, too.

We wandered around the area, looking at shops (it’s a pretty touristy area, so lots of massage places and cafes). We looked at some of the sights such as the Pink Cathedral and headed down to the river to cross the Dragon Bridge. Once we’d had our fill of posing, we headed up and looped around the next bridge, checking out the new developments and stalled building projects along the way. We noticed the river cruise port just upriver, and decided that a river cruise sounded like the perfect thing to finish the day with.

We booked a ticket and headed to dinner first at Helio – a street food market. When we arrived, we realised it was a tourist-focused food court similar to the ones we’d found in Chiang Mai in Thailand – good, local food, but a place clearly designed for non-locals to navigate. It meant though, that we could try a bunch of different local dishes, such as the “Vietnamese Pizza” of grilled rice paper with filling (delicious, more like a taco), banh can (little rice pancakes), and there were lots of other dishes to try that we didn’t have room for.

We picked up another Grab to get back to the ferry terminal and waited for our boat. Unfortunately the boat we’d booked wasn’t running (possibly low numbers) so we were shunted about a bit until we were allocated to a different boat. We got talking with a Vietnamese Australian family who was in Da Nang visiting family, which was good fun. The sights started with a quick Champa traditional dance – lovely to watch, and the performer was good enough to take some photos afterwards with us. The cruise was pretty quick – about 45 mins to do a loop of the river between three of the big bridges, the Dragon Bridge being the showstopper. Once finished we walked back to the hotel, picking our way through the crowds of people lounging outside the coffee shops and convenience stores along the water. It certainly looked a pleasant spot in the fresh air, nursing a coffee (although late coffee= no sleep for me.)

Our second full day we decided to head to the Sunworld Ba Na Hills. The Golden Bridge had caught our imaginations and while we knew it would be busy with other tourists, we thought we should give it a try. According to the google listing, it was a lot less busy than normal, but we found it quite crowded, so I’m glad it wasn’t a “busy” day! While a lot of the travel sites say it’s better to take an all-inclusive tour. we found it fine to take a Grab there and back, and just pre-book our ticket (fyi, Klook was the cheapest).

The Sunworld complex is huge and a real feat of business acumen and engineering. The cable car is massive, with three lines heading up the mountain. I don’t know how high we were, but the temperature and weather changed entirely — it was at least 10C colder at the top, and foggy then rainy, whereas the bottom was a little cloudy but fine. The place itself includes multiple cable car stations, mini French village and mini Paris, and then you get to the Fantasy World (amusement arcade), plus restaurants and multiple hotels.

We hit the Golden Bridge first – a lot smaller and more crowded than it looks in the photos you find online. I’m sure we were included in a few hundred other people’s photos, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the guy shouting up at his partner on the bridge, “Go to the second thumb. The SECOND THUMB!” It is beautiful though, even clogged with people and shrouded in mist.

I found the French Village intriguing. It was beautiful, but why would you put France on the top of a mountain in the middle of Vietnam? Why not, I guess. There were bravely grinning living statues to take photos with for tips, and I was amazed that their grins were still pretty natural and their cat makeup pretty stable after a few hours of fog and rain.

The Fantasy World section had a lot of games and activities. We didn’t go on the “exciting” (read: scary) rides, but R beat me at a dance comp video game, and we jumped into a “5D” Western shootemup game, and then a kind of ghost train mixed with laser tag. We also visited a dinosaur exhibit and saw a random singing/dancing show. At that point it was raining outside and the crowds started to come in, so we stopped for a snack (not much gluten free action there, so good thing I brought a contraband muesli bar — even though the regulations say you can’t bring any outside food or drink.)

After heading back to the hotel, we wandered the streets a while, looking for a cheap n cheerful dinner and then a massage. As I said before, there are many, many cafes and massage places in Da Nang! We found a place with reasonable prices down the road a while, T Spa, which even said on the price list that the charges included a tip! That’s the way to entice us. The foot massage was pretty good, too. A relaxing end to our time in Da Nang, before we headed down the coast to Hoi An.