We left An Bang Beach today to enjoy 2 nights in Da Nang. This wasn’t originally planned but came about after I found out there is an all night rave in front of our beach hotel tonight (no thanks) and the Danang international Fireworks Festival Finale is tomorrow night!
Da Nang is not our usual sort of place. It’s a resort town and has hundreds of expensive high rise beach resorts lined up one after the other. They also block locals from the beach which I’m very opposed to. The tourist stuff around here is very cheesy. With that said, I really needed a decent bed for a night as I am struggling with Vietnamese rock solid mattresses. Our Melia Vinpearl riverside hotel for tonight has very nice beds! And a next level view….
Da Nang has two “touristy” areas with the huge beachside resorts and then a big group of riverside hotels. The new one-kilometer-long (actually, well over that) walking zone runs from the foot of the Dragon Bridge to the Tran Thi Ly Bridge in Hai Chau District and only opened a couple of months ago. We missed the walking street though as I was in charge of directions and we went the wrong way haha.
The Dragon Bridge is very Da Nang haha. Its unique design makes the bridge look like a dragon rising from the river to fly to the sea. The Dragon Bridge can “breathe” Fire and Water with performances at 9 pm on the weekends. The Vietnamese tourist info said only Saturday and Sundays but the internet told us Fridays as well…and eventually I found a link to this site which verified it. Vietnam are not great at updating their websites.
Initially, we were going to visit Asia Park and go on the Ferris wheel evident in some of the photos but it was a real hassle to get to and reviews say the park is not great value. Again…tourist area. Given our epic view from the hotel room tonight we decided we didn’t need a Ferris wheel as well. So we walked down and across the dragon bridge then up the other side. We had dinner at a place full of Vietnamese locals with no instructions on how to put this Da Nang specialty dish (Bahn Cuon) together. Luckily Google helped! https://vietnam.travel/things-to-do/da-nangs-special-pork-rolls
We walked back to the hotel around 8pm and got some lovely photos while walking across the Han Bridge.
Then it was 9pm and time for the dragon to do his fire breathing thing!!!
Tomorrow, we are checking out of here and into a waaaaay cheaper hotel for the grand finale night of the Danang International Fireworks Festival. It was very difficult to get accomodation for that event and prices were about 30x the usual amount for riverside stays…so no panoramic river view from the room tomorrow 😂
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