Viet Nam the fourth: Day 6 Quy Nhon – Da Nang

We said goodbye to our slightly unusual, partly deserted hotel early in order to catch the 7.07am train to Da Nang. I’m sure the hotel means well, but with various oddities in the room design, few of its additional facilities being open, and staff who were very friendly but didn’t really know how to recommend places to go to around town, it wasn’t quite all that 4 star. Its final goodbye involved a poor staff member having to try to go to our room three times to check the minibar, as the swipe cards weren’t working, while our car waited outside. They did manage to sort it but it was enough of a delay that we had one eye on the time the entire drive to the train station: Quy Nhon doesn’t have one of its own, so it’s a little over 10km to the nearest one.

It’s just over 5 hours by train to Da Nang, and the train runs through all of the flavours of VN scenery, from countryside covered in rice fields, to towns, cemetaries, industries, hills, rivers, and even a tunnel or two. In a couple of places you can see the ocean — I tried pointing this out to L but by the time she’d looked it was gone. But it was there, I’m certain.

While it’s 49 years since the end of the American War, it still looks like there are scars on the ground. I noted in a few of the uncultivated patches there were regular sized holes filled with muddy water, sometimes quite regularly spaced. To me at least they looked like bomb craters. I spotted a couple of larger ones with banked up sides, possibly the Vietnamese like to build round dams in the countryside away from where they farm? The train also goes about 10km from Son My village. Google it.

About 5 minutes out of Da Nang, from the train’s speakers came a couple of loud pop tunes, for reasons that are a mystery to us. Maybe, as Da Nang is a major stop, it’s to wake everyone up, though weirdly the music was after the station announcement. File under weird things. We made it through the chaos of the station, the mass of stalls selling all manner of food, the hassling taxi drivers trying to get passengers, the one policeman trying to direct traffic in the car park, the first Grab driver deciding to cancel on us, and headed to the hotel.

Da Nang is the fifth-largest city in VN, with around 1.2 million residents. It also sees several million tourists come through each year, both domestic and international, so it’s rather different to Quy Nhon. The block that our hotel is in also has at least 4 liquor stores, 4 beauty spas, a number of up market stores selling either branded merchandise or “imitation souvenirs”, an up-market banh mi place (70k VND for a banh mi! outrageous!), and a mini-supermarket with all manner of imported goods (including Tim Tams). However it appears to lack a cheap laundry, any little convenience stores, and little cheap eateries. For those we have to go another couple of blocks, and given that we’re not staying at the Novotel nor Marriott (though can see them as they are lit up like the proverbial) I wonder what the shopping is like around those.

We haven’t checked out too much of the surrounds, as it’s been drizzling here today, but did a stroll down to the river to have a look at the amazing Dragon Bridge. Sadly we head to Hoi An on Friday, so will miss the evening show where the bridge spits fire and water. We walked past a bar playing “Friday I’m in Love” that seemed full of English folk, down an entire street of cafes, and checked out a shop advertising organic goods and produce. It’s not our normal kind of neighbourhood.

Dinner was at a corner pho place, as L has been feeling a bit off today chicken soup is exactly what she needed. I went for the pho bo special, with various mystery bits of beef, and was happy to also see they had quay ha noi — the fried breadsticks that taste so good dunked into broth. I also had a Bia Saigon, in a can from the fridge, no plastic half pint and chunk of ice here. The pho was good southern style, beanshoots for garnish, and the broth a little sweeter than in Ha Noi. Condiment-wise I didn’t notice the usual pot of sambal, so will keep an eye out, maybe that’s just how the locals roll here.

Weatherwise it looks like we’re in for intermittent drizzle over the next couple of days, so we’ll look plans that best work in with that. Possibilities are the interesting if overpriced resort in the Ba Na Hills, some tour options, maybe a bit of a cruise on the river. We’ll see.