A tight, well-paced long weekend — My Khe beach, the Golden Bridge on the summit of Ba Na, and one full evening in Hoi An under the lanterns.
Photo: Andrea De Santis / Unsplash
Day 1
Your guide meets the group at Da Nang Airport and transfers you to a beachfront hotel. In the afternoon we drive up the Son Tra Peninsula to Linh Ung Pagoda, with its 67-metre Lady Buddha and a terrace view across the whole bay. After a seafood dinner we walk both banks of the Han River to see the Dragon Bridge and Love Bridge lit up.
Day 2
We start early for the cable car station to stay ahead of the queues. The cabin climbs over primary rainforest to almost 1,500 metres, where it runs about ten degrees cooler than the city. You walk the Golden Bridge, visit the French Village with Du Dome Square and Saint Denis church, wander the Le Jardin D'Amour gardens and have time in Fantasy Park. We come down in the late afternoon; the evening is free in Da Nang.
Day 3
We check out and stop at the Marble Mountains, taking the lift up Thuy Son to Huyen Khong Cave and Linh Ung Pagoda. We continue to Hoi An to walk the old town — the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Tan Ky house and the Fujian Assembly Hall — and eat cao lau and mi Quang. Depending on your flight, your guide transfers you to Da Nang Airport to finish the trip.
Three days and two nights is the standard shape of a Da Nang trip from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City: fly out Friday evening, home Sunday afternoon, no leave required. This itinerary is built around exactly that rhythm.
We put Ba Na in the middle day and start early, because the cable car is the one bottleneck in the whole trip — arrive before nine and you walk straight on, arrive after ten and the queue can be long. The last day is kept light, just the Marble Mountains and Hoi An, so nobody arrives at the airport out of breath.
We book hotels on the My Khe beachfront rather than downtown, so that mornings and evenings you can simply walk out to the sea. Hotel category, flight times and group size are agreed when the contract is signed.
Domestic ToursNorth along Highway 1 to the imperial city on the Perfume River, then into the limestone of Quang Binh for Phong Nha and Paradise Cave.
Domestic ToursSouth down the coast to the clear water of Ky Co, the windswept cliffs of Eo Gio and thousand-year-old Cham towers in the middle of Quy Nhon.