Danang is sold as Vietnam's fourth largest city, and the hub of Central Vietnam. We arrived at the Danang International Airport, famed for its role in the Vietnam war (see Wiki), and were swiftly ushered through immigration and customs (the process took well over an hour...which is slow considering there were roughly 80 people at the airport, and that included all the ground staff!).
Once through the airport, the first thing to strike us was the heat...Oppressive heat (little were we to know that we'd arrived in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures of 37-38 degrees each day). So we hopped in the car and headed off on the 30 minute drive from Danang to Hoi An, our destination for the weekend (more to come on Danang in the next post). The drive was interesting, as driving in SE Asia always is, but it was strikingly different to Indonesia, in that there were very few cars, a decent number of motorcycles, and hundreds of pushbikes. It is amazing to see so many people cycling along (though it seems many of them don't really know how to ride a bike, as they swerve all over the place in a random fashion).
We arrived at our hotel on the river, and enjoyed a brief rest before heading into the old-town of Hoi An to visit the rows of Tailor shops which has made the city a popular tourist spot. Not wanting to be ripped off, we thought it would be best to look around a little before deciding on a tailor, but our plan would soon change.
After lunch of Cao Lau (which was sadly a little disappointing), we were shown to a store by the waitress, where we were ushered inside and forced to look at catalogues of clothing we could have made. Upon asking to see their fabric selection, I was asked to go with one of the sales girls to the other store, just a short distance away (which ended up a good 10 minutes on the back of her motorbike). So...with me on one side of town, Hanna and her mum on the other side, neither of us knowing what was going on, we said, hold on, we need to be together, so they soon ferried Hanna to the second store, and another half hour later, Hanna's mum was brought over to us (to our relief, as we didn't know where she was, and she doesn't speak either English or Vietnamese)...
On a side note, it seemed that everyone couldn't recognise that Hanna and her mum were not Vietnamese. We came to the conclusion that, (a) they are both asian, and (b) obviously married to a white guy, and finally (c) in Vietnam...so they must be Vietnamese...
Once we were all settled into the same tailor store, we started ordering and bargaining for some suit pants, shirts, suit etc...which was all a lot of fun until we started to add up the total... After this, we decided to wonder around the "historic" old-town, but were quickly exhausted by the heat, and went home for a nap, and to sit on the riverside and watch a tropical storm brew overhead.
Hoi An "Historic Town" was quite a picturesque town, with beautiful old streets and buildings. We would have enjoyed wondering around a whole lot more were we not boiling in our skins! As a town, it was more touristy than Bali, which is a difficult thing to achieve. Apart from the tailors, the town is renowned for its silk lanterns, of which we were impressed, but being on a two year trip, such large un-foldable objects are really practical unfortunately. It could have looked nice in our stairwell in Maroubra!
A dream of mine has always been to sit on a tropical beach, under the shade of a palm tree, and just relax...and we finally managed to do this. Though we didn't stay long, as even with the shade, the heat was almost unbearable...
Our biggest disappointment from the trip was the food. In general, everywhere we ate the food was 'average'. Maybe we've become accustomed to the huge range of quality food available in Singapore, but we left expecting to delight in delicious vietnamese dishes, and were disappointed everywhere we went. That was until we decided to try the biggest, most expensive looking place in town, Nam Long. The place is on the river, and is a huge house and gardens, and boasted "authentic vietnamese cuisine". So we tried it...
The food was succulent and tasty. Service was great, surroundings awesome and when the bill finally came, it was actually reasonably cheap. This was probably the highlight of our trip.
Danang... Can't really say much about Da nang...Its a small city/town with little in the way of tourism or shopping. We did spend some time in the Cham museum, which was interesting, but as neither of us are much impressed by ancient rock carvings which have been removed from their original site... (We both found Borobudur much more impressive).
Overall, we enjoyed Hoi An and Danang, but we doubt we'd go back...
