Saturday, February 17, 2024

Visit to Danang, 2024

(For more information about these videos, see HERE)

So, once again, Tet has come (Lunar New Year in Vietnam).
As usual, we went back to my wife's hometown in Quang Ngai.
Usually we fly into Chu Lai airport (W) and then take the bus into Quang Ngai, but this year, because of the days we were travelling, it was cheaper to fly into Danang airport.   (Because Chu Lai is a smaller airport, it can accommodate less flights, and consequently you have to pay more for those flights during the Tet travel rush.)
And as long as we were flying into Danang anyway, the wife decided to arrange to spend a couple days enjoying the sights before taking the train to Quang Ngai.

I have, sad to say, never really spent any time in Danang city during my 9 years in Vietnam.  And I've never enjoyed Danang's beaches, which are a famous tourist destination.
I did pass through Danang city on a group tour of Central Vietnam that the wife and I did back in 2016 (see pictures from that trip HERE).  But although we slept in a hotel in Danang, we didn't really see much of the city or the beach.  Danang was simply a place we passed through on our way to see other sights.
(2016 was also the year of the Formosa pollution incident in Central Vietnam, so no one in our tour group was overly eager to go swimming at the beaches in Danang.  I suspect this is another reason the guided tour didn't linger at the Danang beaches, although it could just be a coincidence.  Maybe the tour would have skipped the beaches regardless.)

So, Danang at last.
We didn't explore much of it.  (It's exhausting travelling with kids.)  But we stayed for a couple nights at a hotel on the beach of Son Tra Peninsula in Danang--Sea Shore Hotel.  Here is a video of the view from the hotel, as well as video of walking around the beach next to the hotel.



On the left, you can see off in the distance a statue of Buddha on the Peninsula.  My wife later pointed out to me I had actually been to that statue on our 2016 trip--I hadn't realized that was the same statue.


The next night, we went to walk around Han River (W) in the riverside area next to Dragon Bridge (W).  I was mostly occupied with trying to stop the kids from running off, but in between kid control, I did manage to get a few seconds of video of the area:


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