Da Nang – Hoi An – Hue

It only takes 1hour to reach Danang by plane from Ho Chi Minh City. Danang is a seaside city which honestly doesn’t have much in it! Majority of the tourist attractions are located a few kilometres outside the city. We only stayed for two nights before moving onto Hoi An which is a short bus ride away. The main thing we wanted to see was Bana Hills. This is where the golden bridge is, which is gradually gaining more fame. The golden bridge is high up on a hillside and is held up by two huge hands formed from rock. It can only be reached by cable car. Naturally as a person scared of heights, I was not 100% thrilled about this fact. After a 15minute cable car, we reached the top and began exploring by crossing the golden bridge. It of course is rammed with tourists, mostly Asian girls taking thousands of Instagram worthy snaps. The views from the bridge are stunning, although we were lucky to get good weather when visiting that day.  There are gardens to explore on this level also, after which another cable car then takes you to the final level on the mountain. This level is called the French village and felt very commercial much like that of Disneyland. We ate, drank beer and visited a weird amusements centre which included carnival rides etc. Luke was keen to go on a ride which resembled a luge but decided against it upon seeing the enormous queues. We climbed many steps to see a pagoda that had some pretty views over the mountains. After 3hours spent in the park our tour finally came to an end. Along the way on our day tour to Bana Hills, we also visited a shop which sold marble carvings and other artwork, as well as another shop which seemed to just sell strange dehydrated food. 

After Danang, we headed south to Hoi An via minibus. Here we met up again with our friend Mark. Hoi An is a really pretty bustling town. Part of the town called “the ancient city” is protected as a world heritage site. All over town, thousands of beautiful hanging lanterns can be seen and admired. They come in almost every colour, fabric, shape and size. We were lucky to arrive during a festival which involves lighting small paper lanterns and floating them on the river. There are also many brightly colour boats lining the river, that light up with fairy lights and lanterns by night. I thought the lanterns gave Hoi An it’s charm and therefore had to buy some for myself. I hope they make it home in one piece! We stayed at a lovely homestay just over the bridge from the town’s bustling market district. At the markets there’s a massive array things you can buy such as fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, seeds, meats, fish, jewellery, clothes, artwork, flowers, trinkets and other things I honestly couldn’t even identify. People were always trying to sell us things by calling at us to come and have a look. For the most part people are very friendly here. During our two night stay in Hoi An, we explored the town centre on foot and sat by the river with a cold beer to cool off – which to our delight converted to be roughly 10p a beer! One evening we ate at a really lovely restaurant called White Marble, where we actually celebrity spotted Jeremy Clarkson! We didn’t dare ask for a photo as we had seen him turn some fans away as he was with his family, but we did manage a sneaky snap. 

After a delightful stay in Hoi An we got a bus to Hue. This took around 3hours on a fairly comfortable sleeper style bus. This involved passing back through Danang briefly, after which we then saw some stunning scenery of rice paddies and mountains. We arrived in Hue late afternoon and grabbed a taxi straight off the bus into the centre to our accommodation – a cute place called Sunny A Hotel. Once checked in we went exploring and ate at a nearby restaurant called Nook Eatery. We also ate here for breakfast because we enjoyed it so much. We arranged to go to the abandoned water park the next day with our friend Mark, who had managed to organise a taxi via his hostel. The water park is rundown and dilapidated which makes it really fun to explore and snap pictures of. Although there are dozens are signs saying no trespassing, it seems to be a fairly popular tourist spot. We paid the “guard” 10,000dong which is roughly 32p, to let us pass through. After an hour or so, we had walked through the park and taken many photos, we hopped back in our taxi and headed to the citadel which was back within the center of Hue. By this time, my feet had had enough therefore I only walked through part of the immense grounds. Mostly I spent time by the ponds which had hundreds of huge koi carp fish living in them. I also got waved at by many Asian tourists driving past in golf buggies as I sat resting on a bench, whilst Luke and Mark walked through the rest of the grounds. The weather had been fairly grey and humid during our stay, so I was looking forward to travelling further north into a cooler climate.