If you haven’t heard of or been to Da Nang before, what would you think it would be like? Here is my guide to exploring Da Nang and what we got up to. When we was planning our trip to Vietnam, we had to decide which parts we wanted to explore. Of course we chose the popular places which includes Halong Bay, Hoi An and Hanoi.

But we also went to a few less touristy places including Da Nang and Ninh Binh. Da Nang had been described as the next up and coming city compared to Ho Chi Minh City. Which we unfortunately had to miss out of our trip.

IS DA NANG THE NEXT BIG CITY? // EXPLORING DA NANG IN VIETNAM

We only had a few days in Da Nang but we managed to find plenty to do. And managed to explore a little bit of each side of the famous Dragon Bridge. I believe that Da Nang still has a little way to go in terms of becoming the next upcoming city. But from what we experienced there it wasn’t dreadful – only the lack of places to eat that were half decent.

The taxi drivers didn’t know some of the major tourist attractions and we had to show them via Google Maps and the lack of decent restaurants and them closing at 10pm was a bit of a bummer. Here is what we did get up to in Da Nang…

We arrived in Da Nang and more importantly our hotel Mandila Beach Hotel after an hours drive from Hoi An in our taxi and unpacked our suitcases in our separate rooms which overlooked the beach and main road. Our hotel was lovely and was very clean. It was a great sized room although the one weird thing was the bath/shower. Which was a very weird set up. I tried to have a shower and the water just went everywhere. The bath wasn’t the best shape to cater for the showers but I made do with what I had.

 A city right next to the sea. 

I have heard if you don’t book the sea view rooms you get a better shower and bath. Which I didn’t know until it was too late. Our hotel also had a rooftop pool and bar with the perfect view of the street and sea in front. It also had a gym and spa and lots of other amenities. On our first night, we just explored the local area and headed out to dinner to a lovely Indian restaurant, which you can read about here.

On our second full day, we hired a taxi driver to take us to the famous Lady Buddha statue. Which we could see from our hotel balcony so we explored the Pagoda which is above. Also a fun fact for you: the Lady Buddha statue is actually taller than The Christ The Redeemer statue in Rio.

The grounds of this buddha and pagoda are beautiful and filled with so many bonsai trees and pretty flowers. It was a super hot day and I was already suffering from my sunburn from Cambodia. So I really had to cover up my arms and shoulders as they were hurting so much. You can see my post of the Lady Buddha over on my Instagram. We went to a really cool jazz bar for drinks which was called The 1920s Lounge. It was cozy inside with a jazz band playing and really quirky cocktails. Unfortunately the nightlife is few and far between at the moment which is a shame but hopefully in the future more will come.

Later on in the day around lunchtime we headed towards the Dragon Bridge which took a little bit of time explaining to the taxi driver what it was but we finally got there. It looks super cloudy but it was still boiling hot and very sweaty so we headed to a nice bar we had heard about to order cold drinks and some lunch which me and Dad shared their falafel wraps which were really nice.

We headed back to the same bar for dinner because we enjoyed it so much but unfortunately had a disappointing dinner which I won’t go into too much. We also got to see the Dragon Bridge lit up at night which was really pretty and changed colour every so often and also the city’s skyline lit up all pretty as well.

Do you think it could be the next big city?

The next day we hired our same taxi driver who took us to The Marble Mountains and also Ba Na Hills which I have written a really good post on which you can read here: Exploring Ba Na Hills In Da Nang, Vietnam. Parts of The Marble Mountains felt a little false and completely filled with Chinese as everywhere is at this time of year in Asian countries but it was interesting to see where they could get their marble from which they use to make furniture, jewelry and lots of status and religious figures from.

The next day we flew to Hanoi which I will write about in another post. I hope you enjoyed reading this and I will have lots more Vietnam content to come.

Are you planning on taking a trip to Da Nang? What are you planning on doing if you visit there? Let me know in the comments below.