Tour of Da Nang
and a Bridge the spat at the crowds

Today we had an half tour tour of Da Nang starting at 2pm, so in the morning Susan and I went out in search of stamps to send more postcards and to find a cake for Tony's birthday.

The post office was over near the Dragon bridge, it didn't take too long to get there and we pasted a few interesting coffee shops on the way. At the post office I need to use the translate feature on my phone to get across that I needed to send 15 letters to the UK. This time I needed 2 stamps per envelope.

Once we'd been to get the stamps the next task was to find a birthday cake. We stopped off at a coffee shop, to use the bathroom and find a suitable cake shop.

When we got back to the hotel we met Tony in the Sky bar and wished him, Happy Birthday. The staff over heard this and then brought out a birthday cake for him.

Tour of Da Nang

Our tour was due to start at 14:00, but by the time the minibus arrived to pick us up it was almost 14:30. Our tour guide for today was Nuttya. We had a few more hotels to go to before we proper got going on the tour. On the way to our first stop we west across the river and crossed the Dragon bridge we then went north and crossed the river again, we went past the fishing harbour and saw life boat and fishing vessels.

Lady Buddha

Our first stop was the Lady Buddha, in the Linh Ung Pagoda. This is the tallest Buddha statue in Vietnam and the 26th largest statue in the world at 67 metres (220 ft) tall.

Marble carving workshop

The next part of the tour we were taken to a marble carving workshop. We were shown around and got to see the craftsmen carving some of the statues. We were then taken through the massive shop of statues for sale, the staff were quite persistent in trying to get us to buy something but the weight restriction on our baggage was just too small, plus I really didn't want to have to carry more stuff around with me.

Marble mountain

The last stop of the day was the Marble mountains. First off we got to go inside the huge limestone caves of the mountain. It was quite wet inside the mountain and there was water constantly dripping from the ceiling, this made some of the parts of the cave un-passable.

After the caves we went up to the top of the mountain, there were 2 ways up the mountain and we chose the elevator as apposed to the steps. The view from the top was excellent.

At the top of the mountain we saw more caves, a huge pagoda and many more statues.

Birthday boy

When we got back to the hotel, we took everyone back to our room so we could give Tony his birthday card and cakes.

Dragon bridge show

Every Friday, Saturday and public holiday the Dragon bridge puts on a show. We found the Lagoon roof top bar close by where we could watch the show from. We booked a 7 seater Grab taxi to take us there. The taxi got us close to the place, but then the roads started getting a bit narrow. Finding the roof top bar was a little tricky as it was just on top of some houses in the area. Once we'd worked out that we needed to walk past someones living room to get to the elevator all was good.

While we waited for the show (which started at 21:00) we drank cocktails. Just before the show started they closed the bridge to traffic. The show started by the Dragon's head spitting out fire about 5 times, then after a sort wait the dragon head then spat out (sprayed) water, all over the gathered crowd many of whom started to run away from being drenched. The show lasted about 8 mins in total and was not quite as dramatic as all the professional images show.

Night market

Once the show had finished, we paid our bill and went in search of food in the night market. We eventually found a stall that had sold to us their wares. They took us upstairs to get a table and took our order. The lady was only working there to help her friends out. In the day time she was a property manager and tried to persuade Tony into signing up for a Time share.

Once we'd finished we then headed back to Maia Beach Bar, for a few more cocktails before bed.