Viet Nam the fourth: Day 8 Da Nang

Viet Nam: beautiful one day, invisible the next. Well, if you head into the hills anyway. The regular reader may recall our experience on the last trip when we summitted the highest point in VN, Mt Fan Xi Pan, where we found ourselves well and truly in the clouds, ensuring the view was John Major grey all around.

Today’s adventure was the Sun World Ba Na Hills resort, about 40 minutes out of Da Nang, location of another of Vietnam’s world record cable cars, and the often stunning Golden Bridge. After a decent breakfast at the hotel we summoned a Grab and headed out. Our driver was lovely, warming to us when we told her this was our fourth trip to VN. This seems to be a standard response, the locals are genuinely touched and happy that we love coming to their country (as we said to the Vietnamese-Aussie last night, completely tongue-in-cheek, “We hate the place, no good food, nothing to see, no friendly people”). It’s a beautiful place, and I’m happy to share it with the 3 or 4 people who read this journal, as if you’ve managed to find your way here you’re unlikely to be the sort who wrecks things.

As we drove into the hills, there was some obvious fog high up. It’s a fairly common thing in VN, while the coastal flat areas can be hot and dry, the hill country can be 10-20 degrees cooler and raining. At the carpark, our driver loaned us an umbrella — useful, but we guess also because she’d asked us if we’d call her direct for the ride back into Da Nang it would keep us honest. It seems to be the way of doing things, especially as it’s fairly quiet for tourists at the moment.

To get to the famed Golden Bridge, the first step is to buy a somewhat expensive ticket to the Sun World Ba Na Hills Resort, which generally includes a ticket for the cable car (doing this online is a bit confusing, as it’s not always apparent if the cable car is included, and what makes the whole thing even more confusing is that it seems the only place your ticket gets checked is just before you get to the cable car, so why there would be a ticket for the lower resort is beyond me). Anyway, cable car, VN loves them, and has some of the longest, highest, and otherwise most record breakingest ones. The one up the hill takes about 20 minutes, and I’m sure has some stunning views on clear days, but today was very much a ride in the twilight zone.

Part of the resort thing is that it’s inspired by olde French stuff, making navigation a little confusing (is that way going to Marseilles Station or Da Nang, or both?!?!) and the map supplied has a hundred points of interest flagged and doesn’t really capture the full 3D of the place, so what we really needed were some big signs saying THE BRIDGE IS THIS WAY. Bear in mind that we’re attempting to navigate through a full sensory experience here, with piped music ranging from light mild classical to Celine Dion’s cover of “What a Wonderful World”, Katy Perry’s “Firework” and ABBA’s “Happy New Year” (along with a wretched cover version of “Auld Lang Syne” that is probably banned in Scotland), while at various times smells will fill the air, cinnamon, fresh bread, baking (though outside near the little Versailles pyramid all we could smell was pork stock being made). Sensory overload and subtle signage.

We found the bridge, though it was quite enveloped in fog. The Golden Bridge looks amazing in photos, the curved pedestrian bridge that appears to be held up by two huge stone hands. And on a clear day I’m sure that’s what it looks like. Today it wasn’t generally possible to see both hands clearly at the same time, but we were fortunate that the crowds were significantly less than average so we weren’t jammed in. Got some okay snaps, probably appeared in the background of numerous other people’s shots, and saw a pretty bridge. Maybe it was the short visibility, but the Golden Bridge doesn’s seem to be that large. Also, as bridges go, it probably should also lose a couple of marks as it is 100% a tourist pedestrian bridge: if may have been created as a way to view an amazing valley, but it doesn’t really have a purpose in getting people from A to B (in fact, once you cross the bridge, there are some confusing signs leading you back to where you started in order to explore the rest of the resort.

The resort has lots of statues, a faux medieval town square with various writer and composer busts, more piped music, expensive food ($6 AUD for a basic hot dog, $5 for a thing of french fries), and an amusement centre with games and rides. For fun we did the 5D cinema experience, which is a 3D game set in the wild west, where everyone sits in moving horse seats and tries to shoot bad guys on the screen. We also did the Centre of the Earth ride, kind of a ghost train cross with a shooting gallery, which of our group of 6 cars, L and I got the most points. There was a stroll through some large dinosaur models, a dancing game where I beat L (not because I can dance, but I was able to work out that it just scored based on your hands being in the right place at the right time), and general light fun things. What’s good is that there were all free in the entry fee.

After having too much fun, we headed back down the hill to where we could see more than 20 metres ahead, and back to Da Nang. I did some food research, and based on the internet, Pham Hong Thai street was highly recommended, and quite close to our hotel. Sadly the street on the internet wasn’t the street we encountered this evening, instead of a street full of food stalls, there were 6 or 7, and not the promised wide variety of offerings. The few stalls did look good, so we went for one that seemed more Chinese-Vietnamese inspired. I went for a pork wanton soup with noodles, and L had the Mi Ga (without us realising that, of just about all the noodle soups in VN, Mi often uses egg noodles (wheat/contains gluten), so when our bowls arrived she had to skip the noodles. Not a huge loss, as I think this thin egg variety is my least favourite of VN’s noodles, as they don’t seem to absorb the flavours the way rice noodles do.

Our post prandial stroll led us to a massage place that was good and reasonably priced — no tips required. My calves got a decent pummelling, though could still use some more attention. Of course it’s the usual way that we only found this place on our last night in town, but at least in Hoi An we know a good place. For dessert I tried a brown sugar bubble tea sundae, and it’s a junk food that I could easily support: soft serve, extra sugar, and chewy tapioca balls, a perfect fusion concept.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Da Nang and trundle about 30 km south to Hoi An, where we’ll order many clothes, eat fine foods (there are a couple of regional specialties I’m keen to try, as well as the banh mi), and relax some more.