Two days in Da Nang: What to do?
I am now in Vietnam in Saigon going through quarantine in preparation for starting my job here teaching English, so it seemed like the perfect time to write about my first trip to Vietnam! Back in 2017 I headed over to Da Nang with a friend of mine for two days, I was living in Hong Kong at the time so it was just a short, cheap flight over. After just a month or two of living in Hong Kong I found out that one of the budget airlines was having a sale, pay for the flight out and the return was free! I checked when all of the long weekends were happening for the year and booked up all of my holidays. Hong Kong is really convenient because you can fly to most places in Asia within a few hours. The options for locations were a bit restricted for the sale, but that was fine with me, it meant I got to explore places that I might not have considered otherwise! Having never heard of Da Nang (I know, uneducated at the time) my friend and I did a bit of Googling to find out what we could do there, turns out it is a popular tourist destination! We only had two days so we wanted to cram in as much as we could so we picked out our top tourist destinations and spent two solid days exploring.
We rented a room through AirBnB which was above a massage parlour for around the equivalent of £5 per night, it wasn't fancy but it was incredibly cheap. We were a bit of a ways from the beach as we were on the other side of the river, you could easily walk to the beach from our BnB but it was ridiculously cheap to get a taxi anywhere in the city. You can also find a place right on the beach front for not much more, £10+ will get you a room or even an entire apartment on the beach!
Da Nang Museum
There are a few different museums in Da Nang, but the one we went to was the "Da Nang Museum", this museum is on the opposite side of the river than the beach, which would be about a 30-45 minute walk, but I recommend getting a "Grab" taxi - Vietnamese Uber - there instead as it would only be around a five minute drive and will cost around £1. The museum has artefacts covering the military and cultural history of Da Nang. There is an entrance fee, but it is the equivalent of less than £1 and is well worth it.
There are three floors inside, the first floor covers the prehistoric and early formation of Da Nang, focusing on the trades they were famous for, such as fishing. The second floor looks at the military history of Da Nang, with focus on the wars fought with the French and the Americans. This floor was incredibly interesting and had many weapons and bomb shells as well as newspaper clippings, photographs, and paintings. The third floor looks at the cultural heritage of the different groups that live within Vietnam and has a cinema to watch documentaries about them.
I highly recommend visiting this museum as it gives a different perspective than what we were taught in school and gives a lot of information on the local culture and heritage of Da Nang.
Marble Mountains
The next place we visited was "Marble Mountains" and the most important information I can give you about this is to bring lots of water! We visited in April which is a very hot month in Vietnam and there are lots of steps to climb. There are plenty of people selling cold drinks and snacks on the mountain, so if you forget to bring any you will be fine. There are 5 mountains total, each named after different elements - metal, wood, water, fire, and earth - the most common mountain people visit is the water mountain as there is an elevator which will take you up, but you can also hike the whole trail which is what we did.
Getting to the mountains is fairly easy, it is 7km from the beach so I recommend getting a Grab taxi, this will only cost you around £2 or £3 and using the Grab app means you know the exact cost in advance to avoid swindling taxi drivers. Once you arrive the entrance fee for hiking is £1.30 per person, and if you want to take the elevator it is an additional £1.30 per person. The hike is amazing, there are caves to explore, amazing carved marble statues and pagodas, and the views from the top are absolutely stunning. We went on a sunny day which has it's pros and cons: pro, the views were super clear, con, it was so hot!
Linh Ung Pagoda
The next place we visited was the Linh Ung Pagoda, which is a the biggest pagoda in Da Nang with a 67 metre tall Lady Buddha in the centre. The courtyard is filled with bonsai trees, and along with the huge Buddha statue it is also famous for the smaller carved statues which show different emotions. From the pagoda you have an amazing view of the ocean, and it is believed that the Buddha statue watches over fishermen to keep them safe in the storms.
Getting here, like everywhere else in Vietnam, is easy by Grab taxi, from the beach it is around a 10km drive and will cost you around £5 or £6. There are also a ton of taxi drivers waiting at the base of the Pagoda, so you can just jump in one when you are ready to leave. I highly recommend trying to visit on a clear day because the views from the summit are absolutely breathtaking.
Honourable mention about the food! Vietnam has the most amazing and cheap street food, we wandered in to several restaurants while we were staying there and some of them didn't speak any English, so we have no idea what we were ordering, but whatever it was was delicious! Most dishes in Vietnam will cost you between £0.50 and £2 unless you are somewhere really fancy, and you always get huge amounts of food, I don't think I managed to finish a single meal while I was there. I am so excited to get out of quarantine to eat some street food! I don't expect I will cook at all the entire nine months that I am living here.
This is everything we managed to cram in to two days, if you have longer in Da Nang you should also check out the beach, the Dragon Bridge, and the coffee shops. Getting anywhere in Da Nang is cheap and easy, and Vietnamese people are ever so friendly and helpful.