Abenteuer in Da Nang

From Saigon, I took a flight to Da Nang which only took one hour. Da Nang is located on a beautiful long sandy beach, no wonder there are already some huge hotels here and many more are being built. Fortunately, my hostel was located in a quiet corner outside the city center, with no cafes and restaurants, just a street away from the beach.

Aside from chilling on the beach, there are a lot of amazing things to see and experience in the area, best done with a scooter. So, we (Tonje from Norway and Michael from the USA) set off to the beautiful Ba Na Hills, especially to see the Golden Bridge. The traffic in Da Nang is crazy, millions of scooters, everyone driving all over the place and honking like crazy. But eventually, you just ride along with the chaos and honk a little too. The Vietnamese have built a kind of amusement park in the beautiful Ba Na Hills, which is actually terrible to see the beautiful nature being disrupted, but the cable car ride up, the Golden Bridge, and the view over the mountains are amazing. The rest is a bit like Phantasialand, but without the rides.

In the evening, we made ourselves comfortable on the beach with a bottle of red wine (very stylish in plastic cups) and shook off the dirt from the road in the sea. On the way back to the hostel, we passed by some sports equipment and Tonje and I immediately swung on a bar and goofed around. Unfortunately, Tonje dislocated her shoulder in the process and it couldn't be put back in place. So, in her bikini, we took a taxi to the nearest hospital. And there it was, just as you imagine a Vietnamese hospital to be: very basic and no one spoke English, all communication was done through Google Translator. Then it was time to relocate the shoulder: the security man from the gate put his bare foot in Tonje's armpit, Michael and the doctor pulled on her arm, and I held onto the bed and let Tonje crush my hand. Definitely a sight to behold. But thanks to teamwork, her shoulder was back in its place. And then the doctor was kind enough not to charge anything for the 'treatment'.

The next day, I headed alone on the scooter to Monkey Mountain, a beautiful wild peninsula near Da Nang. Here, there were actually some monkeys to see and great views, going through small almost overgrown roads along the coast or up curves to the summit. Afterwards, I continued to the Hoi Van Pass, a winding road up the mountain to a military facility from the Vietnam War with some bunkers. There were wonderful viewpoints along the entire route. A long but amazing day on the scooter.

I didn't have Da Nang on my itinerary at all, the guidebook described the city as quite uninteresting. But that couldn't have been further from the truth...