Wednesday 2nd November 2022
We were initially planning on hiring a motorcycle and exploring the Son Tra peninsula today, but after examining the small print of our travel insurance realised we wouldn’t be covered. We quickly came up with a Plan B, a visit to the 3D Museum Art in paradise Da Nang, a quirky but very gimmicky sounding museum / tourist attraction.
On our way there, we spotted a very impressive looking set of traffic lights – particularly so, as it seems the vast majority of Vietnamese pay no attention to the colour of traffic lights.
The 3D Museum Art in paradise Da Nang looked slightly shabby and run down from the outside. We weren’t totally sure it was open, but went to the ticket office and apparently it was, so inside we ventured.
We didn’t get far until we were told off – apparently this is one of those places you have to remove your shoes before entering.
The first room wasn’t purely selfie orientated, and had some cool looking art, including a building one that kind of changed perspective as you walked around it.
The other rooms were predictably very gimmicky. It’s actually quite a big place, and was quite fun to wander around snapping photos along the way. It’s a huge place with a lot of different rooms, each with a different theme, and most are clever and very well laid out.
After the museum, we set off by foot in search of lunch. On the way, we came across a very impressive looking town hall, the Đình làng Mân Quang. It was closed to visitors when we walked past, but was still interesting to look at from the outside.
We soon reached the harbour, which was very pleasant to walk around, and observe all of the boats bobbing up and down.
We weren’t very successful with our hunt for food – most places around here seemed to be closed. We were planning on visiting the museum in the afternoon, so ordered a Grab car to take us to that area. It’s closer to the city centre, so will hopefully have more open restaurants.
We ended up getting lunch at LUK LAK Restaurant, and ordered spring rolls and duck meatballs to share. Both were very good, although I slightly preferred the spring rolls we had last night at Lang Quan.
Just across the road from the restaurant was an interesting looking building. I’ve no idea what it was as it’s not marked on google maps and was very derelict looking. Outside, a big group of kids were practicing some kind of dance – this seems to be quite common in open spaces in Vietnam.
It was only a few minutes walk to the Đà Nẵng Museum. The museum is inside a very interesting looking building, the Dien Hai Rampart, which is apparently a monument marking the first fighting of Da Nang soldiers and people against the French.
The museum is free to enter, so I surprised by how vast it is, spread over three floors. The various exhibits tell the story of Da Nang’s history, as well as it’s traditional arts and culture (with life sized models depicting some of these). It was a very interesting museum, though perhaps not the best I’ve visited – there were a lot of English text information boards but occasionally the translations weren’t the best.
From the museum, we walked to the Da Nang Cathedral – another pink church! Unfortunately we weren’t allowed inside, and as it was mid afternoon it wasn’t the best time for good photos as the sun was already low in the sky.
After the cathedral, it was time for a drink. We went to Var craft beer & cocktail, and were pleased to find its happy hour between 4-7pm with 241 drinks. It was a bit of a mission to order. We chose a cocktail, waitress went away, returned a couple of minimal later to say that cocktail wasn’t available. After repeating this sequence of events 3 times, she then decided our second choice was actually available – yay! It was actually a pretty good cocktail. Although we were a bit annoyed when we went to pay, apparently happy hour is only applicable to the first drive we ordered (if they’d made this clear, we’d only have ordered one, as although they were nice they weren’t cheap at full price).
If we’d walked a little further we’d probably have grabbed a beer at Mario Garden instead, it looked very cool lit up at night!
We’d had quite a big lunch so decided to share a Bahn mi for supper, then call by the big supermarket to get some wine (and maybe snacks) to take back to our studio flat. We chose Chin’s Kitchen Coffee & Beer, as apparently it does great Bahn mi, and ordered one with fish. It didn’t disappoint, although didn’t quite knock our favourites from Ho Chi Minh City off the top spot.
We walked to the GO! (Big C) Supermarket Da Nang, the first decent sized supermarket we’ve been to in Vietnam. It’s a bit of a weird hobby, but I do quite like visiting foreign supermarkets. This one was huge, spread over 3 floors. You also have to leave your bags in a locker before entering the supermarket.
There were a lot of interesting and crazy looking things, I didn’t have a clue what some of them were! They also had big fish tanks filled with live fish, I assume you select one and they kill it for you to take home?
We ended up buying some Vietnamese wine to try, along with a purple fleshed dragonfruit (which we were very proud of ourselves for being able to identify – Ngoc, our tour guide in Can Tho had taught us well!)
We went back to our studio apartment to relax with a glass of wine. Fortunately the hotel had a cork screw (although they had to retrieve it from another guest, clearly we weren’t the only ones with this idea!). The Vietnamese wine was surprisingly good, although we were disappointed with the dragon fruit. It was a bit bland, nowhere near as sweet and fruity as the ones we’d tried on our tuk tuk tour in Siem Reap and the market in Can Tho.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 