The Best of Da Nang and Hoi An
How we spent our first couple of weeks of 2024 in Vietnam; ticking off some tourist activities in Da Nang and Hoi An, and getting to learn about the culture of the locals living there.
After a last-minute flight to Da Nang, we weren't really sure what to expect; we'd done very little research, but we knew it had a beach, and following over a week in Hanoi, that's all we wanted. We booked ourselves in for a few nights, at a lovely boutique hotel in close proximity to the beach, and would later find out that it was very close to what became our go-to vegan breakfast/lunch restaurant - Roots.
It turned out that Da Nang was excellent for vegan food, and we enjoyed many delicious meals that consisted of a mix of traditional Vietnamese food as well as many creative alternatives. We were also pleasantly surprised that Da Nang has a lot of surf rental companies dotted along the beach, so we made sure to utilise these as much as we could.
Before all that, though, we found outselves a brilliant tap room situated right on the beach where we watced people playing volleyball and various games of football/keep-ups, etc. while sipping on some delicious craft beer (quite the novelty in Asia!) The place is called East West Brewing and we would highly recommend paying a visit. They have different deals on at varying times, beer flights, a decent food menu, live music and overall a great vibe. This was a perfect introduction to Da Nang.
Another surprise, was that there was a bridge in Da Nang with a fire-breathing dragon on it. We read that it breathes fire every Saturday and Sunday evening at 9pm and it is NOT TO BE MISSED… As we got there on a Friday, we thought we'd hit the jackpot with our timings and we'd trot off to watch this spectacle at 9pm the very next night.
Well, it took us about an hour to walk there and the place was absolutely dead. We'd read that you can see it from some rooftop bars around the area, which is a better option because it gets heaving on the bridge itself. With that, we took ourselves up to ’Lagoon’; a rooftop bar atop a block of flats. Again, not another person in sight. The blogs we'd read said to secure a spot as early as 7pm, and with us getting there around 8, we thought we were pushing our luck to get a good spot. But no, with front row seats, a perfectly clear view of the Dragon Bridge, and a cocktail in hand, we sat delighted with ourselves in anticipation for the next hour.
To be fair, the bridge did start filling up with other onlookers during that hour, and our bar started to fill up… but then it rained, of course. Despite the departure of other punters, we refused to miss this for a daft bit of rain! I had my gimbal set up with my phone at the ready to start recording and watch the display.
I meeaaaaaaaaannn, I didn't want to call it an anti-climax because it is everything we expected - a bridge with a dragon on it breathing fire (a measly few fire balls)… but we did wonder why the hell we'd got ourselves so excited for it. We spent the show pissing ourselves laughing at the situation. The two of us, rushing across the city to secure a spot, sit out in the rain, hog the best seats in the house and stare at a bloody Dragon Bridge for an hour waiting for it to breathe fire out of its gob - not to mention the road was shut off to vehicles for 20 minutes in anticipation of the event! I do think it'd be exciting to stand on the bridge itself, especially for kids, because after the fire show, it sprays water out of its mouth and everyone gets soaked - so that could be fun. But no, not for us. We swiftly finished our drinks after the show, and made our way back to the hotel.
As weird experiences went in Da Nang, the fire-breathing bridge wasn't even the end of them. As we were on the East coast, we thought it'd be a great idea to get up at 5am and go out to watch the sun rise. A lovely romantic morning on the beach before the hustle and bustle starts, and before it gets too hot, just lying on the sand and watching the sun emerge from over the horizon. Well, for a start, the day we chose to get up was so overcast that there was no sunrise, it just gradually got lighter. But apart from that, our visualisation of the outside world being calm and people-free was out the window due to about 1,000 elderly members of society already being up and out of bed, and participating in all sorts of exercise classes!! No wonder all the oldies look fit and healthy at the ripe old age of 90, when they're up doing Zumba and all sorts of bootcamps at 5am! We were in total awe of them, and our sense of accomplishment for being up before sunrise quickly diminished.
Onwards and upwards, we took ourselves off for a much-needed lie down on the beach after the exhaustion of watching the golden oldies at their fitness classes, while we waited for Roots to open. We planned a day of surfing and chilling on the beach, so a delicious and nutritious breakfast was needed. I went all in on the health train and got myself a ‘Deep Roots’ cold pressed juice, consisting of beetroot, carrot, ginger and apple, paired with a ‘Tropical Pitaya’ smoothie bowl which was made of banana, dragon fruit, cocoa mylk, mango, granola and sesame seeds. What could go wrong, doing strenuous exercise after all of the above, you may ask… Well, let me tell you…
Tor and I thought we’d surpassed the beginners stage of surfing in the shallow waters, and decided it was time we joined the pros out back; they made it look so easy! So off we went, paddling our little arses off to join them. Well, in the middle of Tor asking me “How will you turn around quickly if a wave comes?” (They’d beaten me to the back and was already turned around ready to catch the next green wave - I, on the other hand, was very much facing the horizon…) a huuuuuuge wave came out of what seemed like nowhere, and in my feeble attempt to turn myself around on time and demonstrate my response to Tor’s question, it swallowed me up like a killer whale and spat me right back out in a spin. So, remember all that breakfast I mentioned in the last paragraph? Yeah… she hadn’t quite digested and there it was in all its glory, floating around my sorry little pro-surfer face atop the South China Sea. Time to get out.
The rest of our time in Da Nang was spent trying to regain confidence in the sea (back in the shallows), enjoying more walks around the quieter part of town we were in, and generally just relaxing in the beach bars and soaking in the chilled out beach vibes it offered.
Not far from Da Nang, is Hoi An; probably one of the most photographed places in Southeast Asia, famous for its beautiful displays of traditional lanterns hanging like bunting across the historic old town, as well as the paper lanterns containing candles that people light to honour their ancestors and send floating down the river. This place really does come alive at night.
Hoi An, as you can imagine, is a tourist hotspot. But what we came to learn over the week we spent there, was that there’s more to Hoi An than the historic old town, and just across the bridge, you can cycle around some quaint little villages with local people working on their farms and paddy fields. Doing this was probably a highlight of our time in Hoi An, because we got to see glimpses of the ‘real’ Vietnam, and see how the true locals live. We went to a little cafe run by a kind, elderly man with a wooden leg. Many elderly people in Vietnam are still living with their injuries from the war, and with the language barrier, one can only guess this gent was another ex-soldier/war victim. He gave us our cups of tea, and just sat smiling as we enjoyed his quiet company until our cups were empty and without prompt, he'd get up and give us a refill. We could have sat there for hours just enjoying being outside amongst the rice paddies and watching on as his neighbours fished in the small lake near his place. It really was a simple life.
Back on our bikes, we cycled through a little more of the village before heading back over to the touristic center where we were staying. As it happened, it was school closing time, and being the white buffoons on bicycles we were, we stood out a mile and therefore had all the kids giggling and waving at us. We took it as a compliment and waved on, as we pedaled our way through their quiet village.
We did a tourist-typical activity in the evening, after we were sold a trip earlier that day. We did the coconut basket boats. For anyone who doesn’t know, coconut basket boats (also known as Thung Chai) are small basket-like boats made from strips of bamboo and can fit 2-3 people in them. Thung Chai were originally used instead of typical fishing boats when the French took over and started taxing people for boat ownership - the crafty Vietnamese argued they were in fact baskets, not boats, and therefore didn’t have to pay tax. Thung Chai are still used today for fishing, but are now also used to frighten the life out of tourists as the professionals use their paddles to spin the boat around as if you’re on a man-powered waltzer! It was great fun to be on the water and paddling through the long grass, watching as other boaters fished for crabs as the sun set over us.
Our favourite activity of all during our time in Hoi An, was the bamboo circus performance called Teh Dar at the Lune Center. Not only was the performance brilliant, but the building it was held in was absolutely amazing. The Lune Center is famous for its innovative bamboo architecture. The main section is a 24-meter bamboo dome, which is a nod to the full moon—a sacred symbol in Vietnamese culture. The show itself was on another level and totally surpassed any expectations we had beforehand. The bamboo circus is a one hour long acrobatic show that not only is a display of mesmerising talent, but also tells stories of Vietnamese folklore, too. As the name alludes, the show revolves around bamboo. The acrobats use bamboo in a number of different ways throughout their performance, including structural props for acrobats balance on, aerial acts where acrobats climb up and swing from and do other wild stunts, and the bamboo is used to display cultural meaning as it’s a highly symbolic material in Vietnam that represents simplicity and resilience.
All-in-all, we were happy with our decision to flee the north and head down to Da Nang and Hoi An. It wasn’t what we’d originally planned, but the best trips never are!