Central Vietnam: Imperial Cities and Handy Bridges
“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
Travel MOOD
I’m going to take a self indulgent moment of whining.
There are days where I tire of acclimating to new places. Don’t get me wrong. I love traveling. I mean I LOVE it. Obviously, or I wouldn’t have turned country hopping into a full time career that pays in the currency of life experience. But I’m constantly starting over. And there are days where this feels positively exhausting.
Great….let’s pull up a map and figure my way around. Again. Time to get lost. Again. Let’s spend the next four hours figuring out where I’m going to stay this weekend, and how I’m going to get there. What are the visa requirements in this country? Do they have a good train or bus system? Can I get a cab easily?
And then there are all the things to see. Each new place brings its own temples, palaces, boat rides and attractions that ‘you just can’t miss’. Well, I miss a lot of them. I see a lot too, but I have plenty of days where I’m sick to death of trolling trip advisor and culture trip reviews to figure out the next four days of my life.
This was my frame of mind when I arrived in Hue City in central Vietnam. I was happy to be there. It’s much better than sitting in an office somewhere. But I was travel cranky.
Also, no offense to Vietnamese food, but by the time I got to Hue I was very much over Vietnamese food. I’m SO fed up (literally) of rice noodles. Rice noodles in Pho. Noodles in the spring rolls. ‘Salads’ in Vietnam are not bowls of leafy green vegetables, but bowls of meat and noodles. My only asian pasta escape is to have a Banh Mi, and this is only swapping noodle carbs for bread carbs. The food is good, but jesus, I can’t eat like this anymore. No more noodles.
I try to take these travel woes in stride as a net positive. What a horrible problem to have – I’ve been to sooo many places that travel is becoming cumbersome. Furthermore, I’m nearing the end of this sabbatical year of travel. I’m on the last leg here with just a few weeks left. Soon I need to go home and figure out my ‘normal’ life again. I’m closer to feeling ready for that.
Not yet though.
Hue City
Some introductory background. Huế is in central Vietnam and was the seat of Nguyen Dynasty emperors, and the national capital in the 1800’s until 1945. Hue’s major attraction is its vast, 19th-century Citadel, surrounded by a moat and thick stone walls. This area is the Imperial City.
Under normal circumstances, I would have enjoyed Hue City quite a lot. Hue is smaller than Hanoi, much easier and less stressful to handle from a pedestrian standpoint. I like that. I also like that similar to Hanoi, it’s streets are lined with a plethora of an equal share of local cheap, and high-end themed coffee shops. It has anything and everything I could ever want to meet my caffeinated heart’s desire.
My hotel room in Hue also checked several boxes on my accommodation wishlist – brand new building, giant bathroom, balcony views, coffee shop downstairs, super clean, and hella cheap. The room was $12 a night. I get amped off a good bargain, and this was the bargain to end all bargains.
So while travel weary, I didn’t not like my stay here. Besides, I love a good moat. I’ll probably never be back here again. Even though I’m tired, I might as well see some things.
Leaving the Hotel
My first day, in truth, I did NOTHING. The rain poured down all day. This was just the excuse I needed not to see jack squat. I left the hotel for two to three hours to prove my legs still worked and to find something to eat. Other than that, I hid out in my awesome hotel room, watched cooking shows on Netflix, and slept for 12 hours.
DID IT. LOVED IT. Just what I needed.
Day two I convinced myself to stop being so lazy and see something. I was still feeling slow and lethargic, but the clouds parted and it had stopped raining. So I got my lazy ass out of bed and I walked the 30 minutes to the Imperial City.
The word I would use to describe the Imperial City is….Meh. Maybe it was me. It was another dreary gray day, and I wasn’t in the right mood to be impressed. Or maybe it’s that it wasn’t that impressive.
First, the positive. Good moat. One of the better ones I’ve seen. Secondly, the Imperial City is much larger than I realized. It’s actually quite a huge chunk of land with expansive green lawns. This is impressive in itself, especially considering its smack in the middle of the modern city.
You can walk around this area for hours and hours, and the grounds themselves are quite pretty. I love some greenery, and there’s no shortage of walkable green fields, lakes of koi, and lovely flowering bushes lining the buildings and walkways. Many of the buildings and statues are very ornate and colored beautifully.
Now the negative. A lot of the city is in effect, a reconstruction. Between lack of maintenance, and the Vietnam war, several of the structures fell into dilapidated condition or were heavily damaged in the mid to late 1900’s. The Vietnamese government spent significant time and resources in the last 20-30 years revitalizing this area, but it’s still not quite the same. The buildings and grounds don’t resonate with the same sense of history. The site doesn’t pack the same emotional punch knowing the materials and paint jobs were completed in my lifetime.
I walked around the historic site for a good part of the afternoon. It felt like FOREVER, but it was actually only a few hours. Randomly, I ran into the New Yorker from my cave hiking trip the prior week (Elaine! I remembered someone’s name) while exploring the city grounds. We chatted for a few minutes before parting ways to continue on with our individual agendas. I felt reassured learning that she felt similarly unenthusiastic about exploring this area. Maybe the leeches on our cave camp sucked the travel enthusiasm right out of us.
Along with my ticket to the imperial city, I also purchased an entry for one of several tombs in other parts of the city. But I didn’t go. That’s how unmotivated I was. I bought a ticket for something and didn’t use it. I don’t waste money like that. But I just couldn’t be bothered. And I’ve learned that’s ok. I don’t have to be a super tourist every day.
I left in the late afternoon, found a cute restaurant offering western food, and ate a kale smoothie and a tuna melt. It was the best.
No noodles in sight
Moving South (Central)
Moving further south still, I caught a train from Hue to the coastal town of Da Nang. Full disclosure – I didn’t really know much about Da Nang before arriving. As previously discussed, I’m getting a little lazy with my travel pre-reading and planning. These days more often than not, I’m booking a hostel, showing up and figuring out what to do when I get there. And this system has worked out alright for me, thank you very much.
I chose this destination for a single super touristy reason. Well, two reasons really. One – Da Nang has an international airport. I needed this to fly to Bali to meet friends around the Christmas holiday. Secondly – I’m here to see and take pictures of the golden hand bridge.
You’ve probably seen pictures of it. It’s been trolling around Instagram, and those Conde Nest travel spot lists ever since it opened a few years ago. Look familiar?
I’ll be damned, but I bought into the hype. I planned my whole central Vietnam itinerary around seeing this bridge. It’s as good a reason as any.
My plan was go to Da Nang, see the bridge, manage down one last bowl of Pho, hit the airport and get out. It’s been fun Vietnam, but Bali here I come.
Da Nang: A Pretty Nice City Actually
Da Nang came with pleasant surprises. It’s unexpectedly modern and new. I knew the area was growing, but it’s got that new construction glow about it emphasized by a spattering of metal cranes lining the skyline. Secondly, it has a motha f’ing amazing beachfront boardwalk. A beach with pastel sunsets and crashing waves.
Dotting the sandy beachfront are children running, couples holding hands, friends playing volleyball, and young grandmothers taking Tai Chi classes. From the beach you can see the outline of mountains in the distant background where the coastline curves around to the uninhabited jungle. It wasn’t warm enough to swim, and the water looked dangerous, but I think it’s the most beautiful city beach I’ve ever seen. Simply lovely. I would definitely come back here and stay for longer.
Ba Na Hills
Ba Na Hills. Here’s what I did know – this is where I needed to go to see the Insta-famous Golden Hand Bridge. Here’s what I didn’t know – anything else about where it was or how to get there. I was embarrassingly ill-prepared. The only piece of knowledge I had was that the bridge is near Da Nang. I assumed in some nearby national park.
All my assumptions were completely off base. The bridge is not in a national park, but a giant resort in the mountains. Ba Na is not a place to go hiking, it’s a place you go to eat a buffet dinner, take a cable car, and ride a rollercoaster.
Whatever, I’m on board.
Ba Na Hills is actually like Disneyland in Vietnam. Or maybe Harry Potter world? It’s a big resort, originally started by the French back in the day, and eventually converted to a giant theme park by the Vietnamese government.
To get up to the resort and the sights (including the bridge) requires several long cable car rides. In an inspiring feat of engineering, the French and Vietnamese built the entire resort high up in the mountains.
I honestly had no idea. There are so many strange things in Ba Na Hills that don’t go together but I guess they do go together here.
At the top of the first cable car is a giant Buddha statue at one side of the park, and the golden hand bridge on the other.
Me and B 
Buddha
The bridge is much smaller in real life than it looks like in pictures. Also it’s a bridge to nowhere. It connects an ice cream stand to the cable car waiting area, and you can easily bypass this process by walking through a building. It is an engineering and design project made for the sole purpose of instagram pictures.
But you know what, they nailed it. The pictures look great. Only in Asia.
Even I think this looks fake
A ride on a second cable car brings guests to the top of the mountain and the main resort. Here lies a small recreation of the Notre Dame Cathedral, several French inspired castles, several more pagodas and buddha statues, a german bier hall, and dozens of actors on stilts dressed up for Christmas.
It’s weird. It’s themed. I didn’t really get it, and I kind of loved it and was annoyed by it at the same time. More than anything else, it’s a whole different side of Vietnam I’ve never seen.
Merry Christmas 
Xmas on Stilts 
Beer Halls 
Inside the Notre Dame 
More Castles 
Castles in Construction 
French Towns 
The Indoor Amusement Park 
Pagodas
Rather than be disappointed, I took this as a pleasant travel surprise. I’m glad I didn’t know anything about Ba Na before I arrived or I might not have found it as oddly amusing. I saw a Hip Hop Nutcracker performance performed by a cast of white breakdancing Europeans with dreadlocks. This place was crazy amazing, and in all honesty, if I knew what it really was before booking my tour I probably never would have come.
Hoi An
Most tourists stay a night or two in Da Nang, and a night or two in Hoi An. I didn’t have time for this crap. I was on a one track travel mind, and that track led straight to two giant stone hands holding up a pedestrian walkway. BUT. While making casual convo with a taxi driver in Hue, I mentioned that I did not plan to visit Hoi An, only Da Nang, and man, you should have seen the look on his face. He looked personally offended.
“Why you not go there? Everybody loves Hoi An. They have the lanterns. Don’t you see the pictures – the streets with the lanterns. So pretty. Tourists love this. It’s so close to Da Nang.”
Ugh. I plastered a sweet smile on my face and uttered an unenthusiastic thank you. But my inner self rolled my eyes at this man sharing incredibly useful information about beautiful things to see in his home country. I was obviously in no mood to make a very convenient and thoroughly described DAY TRIP to yet another city. Pulease.
“It’s so close to Da Nang. Just short cab ride. 40 minutes maybe. You have to go for an afternoon.”
Whatever buddy. FINE. I guess I’ll grab a very reasonably priced cab, and take the very easy drive to see the picturesque city of Hoi An. ALRIGHT ALREADY.
I went there for dinner.
Turns out tips from astonished taxi drivers make for failsafe advice. Hội An is known for its well-preserved Ancient Town, cut through with canals. The former port city’s melting-pot history is reflected in its architecture, a mix of eras and styles from wooden Chinese shophouses and temples to colorful French colonial buildings, ornate Vietnamese tube houses and the iconic Japanese Covered Bridge (I’m stealing shit from Wikipedia again, #lazy).
Like many other Asian tourist sites, it stands ready and waiting for millennials to snap their best Instagram shot. Small boats for tourists fill the canals, while floating candles dot the water, illuminating it in tiny romantic lighting. Honestly this city is cheesily adorable.
I had dinner at a non-profit restaurant that employs and trains previously trafficked or at risk youth – a habit I picked up from my recent Vietnamese travel companion Ankit in Laos. This restaurant made the whole experience even more sweetly magical. The employees are extra friendly and smiley. It’s as though reading me the dessert menu was the thing they looked forward to all day. I liked them so much, I splurged and stayed for a second glass of wine.
I’ll admit…I was lucky I ran into that cab driver, and let him guilt me about my travel itinerary. I would have been remiss to miss out on seeing Hoi An. It’s crazy that I was right next door and had no intention of visiting. It is lovely and picturesque and easy to get to and all those things. Touche cabbie.
Japanese bridges in Vietnam
Goodbye Vietnam
I left Da Nang the next morning for the airport. Thus wraps up almost a month of Vietamese exploration. On to my next and (almost) last destination: Indonesia.
To be continued…..
