It was a very early morning wakeup after TET (Chinese New Year) that we had to get to the Ho Chi Minh airport for our flight to Da Nang. We have started to realize that even destinations that are less than 5 km away take longer to get too in Vietnam….there are no direct roads; our 7 km drive to the airport was still 30 mins at 7 am. As we navigated through the biggest airport in Vietnam, it was hard to not notice how quiet it was; no overhead announcements, no one is running, there is no mad panic of people running for flights, people are barely talking, there are signs posted in many public places that no loud talking is allowed…such a different culture.
We arrived in Da Nang and we had a driver that was supposed to meet us at the pickup point….but as we assumed would happen, he wasn’t there. Eventually through our Bookings app, he showed up…pretty sure he was napping in the car. But then the address of the hotel wasn’t right…he dropped us off at not our hotel, then put us back in the car and went searching for the right place. Took another 10 minutes, but he found it….and just when you think you have learned about quality of hotels….you get a kick in the ass…the pictures online always tell a different story and you never really know what you get until you get there. We paid for the 5 days before we saw the room, and next time we will ask to see the room first and then pay. It wasn’t the worst and it was only 5 days. Many hotels are cash pay only, unless you go to the big chains, none of the small hotels want to pay the credit card fees.
We went for our inaugural walk to the beach to check it out and then had a short nap before we had a reunion with friends that we met in Mexico for dinner. They had already been staying in the area for 10 days and gave us the low down on the major highlights.
Day 2 started with another beach walk…followed by a self-guided walking tour of old town. Very very cool…lots of temples, history, markets, shopping. We bought a few things. Skinny walking street Hoi An’s Ancient Town has been registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999 and is a well-preserved former site of a once-thriving Southeast Asian trading port dating back to the 15th century. Lots of cool streets and alleys.
Wednesday night we all got tickets to a cool outdoor show event at the Memoriesland theme park. It started at 530 and there were like 5 minute mini shows all around the park that you could watch. You could then get dinner at one of the many restaurants and the main event show Memories was at 8 pm; it was a story if Vietnam’s history…it was really cool in an odd way. The whole park was odd in a Vietnamese kinda way.
Another early morning as we headed to Marble Mountains. Cool limestone caves from the 13th century and location of where the Vietcong hid during the war. This was a hot day … but so cool! It was during this time in Hoi An and at marble mountains that we started seeing swastika’s as tattoo’s (on people) but also on Buddha’s. Apparently it has links back to Hinduism…and Hitler stole it . Anyway this climb took longer than it looks like it did!Highest Peak
We rented a 50cc scooter to tour Hoi An for a couple days. Found out that Canadians can only rent electric scooter or 50cc scooter because Canada didn’t sign the international driver’s license treaty in 1968…so because of that our international drivers license isn’t valid here. Anyway we had a gutless scooter but after we gassed her up, we went to some fun places.. rice paddy fields, to see water Buffalo’s, to Old Town, and multiple beaches. Who knew the rice paddy’s were so close to the ocean.
Had some delicious food too…a couple of Hoi An specialties – pork rice noodle with pig ear, rice dumpling with shrimp and pork floss with fish sauce. I am going to miss meat floss when I get home.
After 3 days, we bid farewell to our fellow friends and spent our last day in Hoi An at our local beach ⛱️ We had a few days of overcast so it was nice to have sun all day. Basically all we did was chill, look at and get into the water and eat, and a couple of beach walks….there are so many unfinished and abandoned beach properties here. The last dinner in the area was in Old town and then we lit a candle and put it in the river for Jills dads bday. Old town-river-laterns.html
Here are some pics of our 5 days in Hoi An: Hoi-an-pics.html
The next location was very close…city of Da Nang. Our first night was the CAN vs US Olympic hockey game where we watched it with a few hundred Canadians at Hybrid Sports Bar.
Rented another 50cc scooter today…this one was new and way better than the one we had in Hoi An. We went touring around to find monkeys, see the lady Buddha (she is 67 metres tall!), some temples, some beautiful flowers and trees before we toured to the naval base, beaches we couldn’t quite get too and the dragon bridge (Hyperlapse Dragon bridge). The plan for Da Nang wasn’t to see the Hokie tourist sites like Ba Na Hills & Golden Bridge (Vietnamese theme park in the mountains), we were looking to see if it was a location we could spend more time in as an ex-pat. We concluded that yes we could and there is a VERY large community of Canadian Ex-pats here.
On our second morning, we had another early morning alarm to take a GRAB from Da Nang to the ferry port so we could take the ferry to Cham Islands…we were told that this is a must do! The ferry ride was crazy and wavy but we arrived to the island by 9 am, procured a scooter and proceeded our island tour. The island is famous for its pristine, deserted beaches and snorkelling (I wouldn’t say the snorkelling was worth putting your head in the water). But the beaches were excellent as were the food and drink. Scooter-with-animals.html We overnighted here in a cute hotel on the beach. We had to give the scooter back by 930, so we did the full speedy Island tour (20 km round trip), dropped it off and did a short walk thru some streets. Found a well, some drying squid and Todd ate a traditional breakfast of sweet pork noodle and quail egg before we ferried back to mainland. Cham-island-pics.html
Our last day and a half in Da Nang was touring on the scooter…then it was time to get on the train headed to Hue. Here are some pics of our time here: Da Nang-pics.html