I planned to take day trips across the next three days to explore the sights around Da Nang. To explore what Da Nang had to offer, we joined a day trip to Ba Na Hills.

The Marble Workshop – A Short Tourist Shopping Stop

After researching day trips to Ba Na Hills, we decided on the day trip organised by the resort as it seemed to cover more sights. After breakfast, we made our way to the resort’s main gate to meet our guide. We were pleasantly surprised that we were the only ones on today’s day trip, making it a private tour. Our first stop was a nearby marble workshop at the foot of the famous Marble Mountains (which we will visit two days later). I thought this was one of the tourist shopping stops that comes with day trips. We were given a short brief on how the masters turned an unassuming piece of rock into a remarkable marble artwork. After the very short brief, we were led into the shop selling the marble works. As we did not intend to get anything from here, we spent the next 5 mins walking through the shop. The staff at the shop seemed to know that we were not interested in getting anything from them; they were not pushy and merely walked behind us. After a brief 10-minute stop, we left the workshop and headed to Ba Na Hills.

Ba Na Hills – The French Resort Getaway

On our way to Ba Na Hills, our guide narrated that the French built a resort there during their occupation to escape the heat in Da Nang. Before the cable car system was installed, it would have taken eight Vietnamese to transport one Frenchman up the hills through the windy and treacherous mountain roads. The Vietnamese government redeveloped Ba Na Hills in the 1990s and installed a network of five cable car systems. Today, Ba Na Hills houses the world’s longest cable car system, which was completed in 2013 to ferry visitors to the mountaintop. The base station was crowded when we arrived at Ba Na Hills. As we walked to the cable car station, our guide explained that parts of the architecture we saw along the way were modelled after the houses in Hoi An, an ancient port city near Da Nang.

Despite the long queue, our knowledgeable guide seemed to know the way around the long queues, and we boarded the cable with a very short waiting time. The cable car transported us up 1,500m to the top of Ba Na Hills in around 20 minutes. Along the way, we were treated to the beautiful coastal lines of My Khe Beach and the city of Da Nang. At the top, our guide whizzed us through the resort to another cable car system. This 3-minute cable car ride took us to our first stop on Ba Na Hills—the iconic Golden Bridge.

Golden Bridge – the Icon of Da Nang

Exiting the cable car station, the iconic Golden Bridge is immediately in sight after a short flight of stairs. The Golden Bridge is a 150m curved bridge seemingly supported by two giant hands situated at the edge of the mountain. The two giant hands supporting the curved bridge symbolise the hands of the Mountain God supporting the bridge to carry visitors to the Paradise Garden. It is these two giant hands that gave Da Nang its icon. Despite the bridge being completed only in 2018, the architects purposely gave it an ancient look. There was a crowd at the Golden Bridge at the time of our visit. Our guide brought us to the best photo spots on the bridge, helped us take perfect pictures, and even shooed other visitors on the bridge to help us take the perfect shots. As we walked along the bridge, our guide took us to the spot where we were treated to the best views on the bridge – views of Da Nang City and My Khe Beach area. We were lucky that the sky was clear and visibility was excellent. Our guide told us such views were not guaranteed based on his experience at the Golden Bridge. There were times when the clouds were low; visitors would not be able to see such great views. We did not stay at the bridge for too long and headed over to our next destination.

The Gardens of Ba Na Hill

A short walk from the Golden Bridge, our guide took us to the Debay Wine Cellar. As this paid attraction was not part of our tour, we were given the option to spend some time in the cellar. Our guide informed us that the ticket price includes a glass of wine and a spot on the balcony overlooking the flower garden. As we do not drink wine, we gave this spot a pass.

The Le Jardin D’Amour, or the Garden of Love, was our next spot, just next to the wine cellar. The Le Jardin D’Amour is a small garden with vibrantly coloured flowers dotted in a small plot of land. The garden’s centrepiece was a Cinderella-like character with flowers as her dress. Due to the small scale of the garden, coupled with the fact that we were not really into flowers, we only spent mere minutes here and left after taking some pictures. Our guide led us to a garden maze next, sitting at the end of the garden. He then challenged us to break the record of 1 min 20 min set by an Aussie couple. We had some fun walking in the small garden maze, with half the time hastening our steps to see if we could break the record. We thought we had beaten the record at the maze exit when we met our guide. We were told we had spent about 3 mins 15 mins. Not exactly a record-breaking speed.

The Garden of Eden was next to the Le Jardin D’Amour and the garden maze. The Garden of Eden is a small plot of land planted with vibrant and colourful flowers. The main feature in this garden is the huge peacock head sitting at the end of the bed of flowers, with these flowers forming the peacock’s tail feathers. There is a terrace that is crowded with visitors taking pictures of the garden. However, we found the terrace at the opposite end of the peacock head to be a better photo spot. There were no visitors here, and we were also able to capture the entire garden with the peacock head.

The Giant Buddha Statue at Linh Ung Pagoda

Passing by the Peacock Garden, we arrived at our next stop—the Giant Buddha Statue next to Linh Ung Pagoda. Our guide told us the 27-meter-tall Buddha statue was crafted from marbles mined from the Marble Mountains. With a serene face, the white marble Buddha seemed to overlook the city of Da Nang as though he were watching over and protecting the city. We did not spend a lot of time here and left after offering our prayers and taking some photos.

Movie Time at the Luna Castle

To get to our next stop on Ba Na Hills, we traced back our steps to the Le Jardin D’Amour and were led to a funicular station, which we took to the cable car station. The funicular ride to the cable car station gave us great views of the city. After a short cable car ride, we arrived at our next stop—the buffet lunch restaurant, Arapang Restaurant. Our lunch was included in the price of the ticket.

Our guide took us to another funicular not far from Arapang Restaurant after lunch to the Luna Castle. This funicular would have treated us to the mountainous views around Ba Na Hills if not for the low clouds. The Luna Castle houses two theatres. Our guide told us that the European-inspired Luna Castle was a COVID baby built during the pandemic. I thought the Luna Castle was big and empty, with a lot of unused space. My friend and I were commenting about how many rooms this castle could fit if converted into a hotel. The purpose that our guide brought us here was to watch two short animated shows. The first short film, Flying Eyes, brought us around the world to see some of the landmarks. My friend and I were counting the number of landmarks we visited while watching the short film. The second film, Happy Family, was a 4D film about a family’s outing to a theme park. The film brought us through the roller coaster ride that the family was riding on.

Fantasy Park and French Village

After the films, we headed back to the French Village and Fantasy Park, where we were given some free time to wander around the main area of Ba Na Hills. Our guide brought us back to the funicular that took us back to the French Village. The first item on our list was to walk around the French Village, which our guide told us was model after buildings in France. Walking in French Village, I thought it looked more medieval than French. We stopped by a food truck for a Vietnamese coffee break before exploring the area more. As we were walking, we saw a carousel, but by mistake, we couldn’t seem to find our way to the carousel. We ended up on the flying chair rides, which were included in the ticket price to Ba Na Hills. There was a queue for the flying chair ride, but we did not have to wait too long for our turn. Although the ride just went around in a circle, we enjoyed it. After the ride, we went into the indoor Fantasy Park area for a bumper car ride we had passed by earlier. We had great fun on the bumper car and even ganged up together to bump others.

After the bumper car, we wanted to take the alpine coaster ride (cost VND70,000). The Alpine coaster has two lines; the first is next to the cable car station we arrived in. We constantly saw long queues for this line as it was very centrally located. The second line seemed more exciting and was a tad difficult to find. There was a short queue at the ticketing counter, which did not seem to be moving at the time of our arrival. Initially I thought the couple at the front of the queue was being difficult. We subsequently learnt that the staff stopped selling the tickets due to the bad visibility caused by the low clouds. We gave up waiting after another 10 minutes and returned to meet our guide.

After meeting our guide, he whisked us to the descending cable car station as he was concerned that it might rain due to the low clouds. Our guide told us that one of the groups he took was stuck in the cable car for 30 minutes due to heavy rain. By the time we reached the base cable car station, it was raining cats and dogs. Our guide mentioned we were lucky that the rain came in the evening and not during the day when we were having fun at Ba Na Hills. We arrived back at the resort at around 6 pm. We were too lazy to get out of our villa as it was raining and the long day we had. We ordered Grab Food for dinner and spent the rest of the evening chilling out in our villa. We like Ba Na Hills so much that we even talked about only visiting and perhaps spending a night on the hills when we return to Da Nang.