We ended our month in Vietnam in Danang, a modern city full of high-rise hotels on the beach, which is long and vigorously policed by lifeguards in fetching coracles making sure nobody goes out too far.
People swim in the late afternoon and, to our amazement, well before 6.00 in the morning when the water is calmer and sun just coming up:
We stayed in a beautifully designed hotel overlooking the beach called ‘Chicland’ (Chick land? Chic land?) by a famous Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia, about whom Josh has written a great piece for Wallpaper – my photograph doesn’t do it justice so go and check out the article:
Danang has a great new bridge which is in the shape of a dragon and breathes fire at 9.00 pm on a Saturday night. We were there ready, very excited, only to discover that we were at the wrong end of the dragon so it didn’t look very impressive – but we did see the flames a bit:
We went to the movies – we like to do this at least once if we can when we are on holiday – and saw a Vietnamese film called, in English, Song of the South: as Josh and Bien said, silly but beautiful photography of the Mekong Delta which we didn’t get to:
We did manage to visit the one museum we found in Danang – an excellent small museum of Cham monuments (that is, those which haven’t ended up in European museums) – you’ll remember the Cham post from a couple of days ago. We were struck again with the Hindu echos deflected through Buddhism including this charming, meditating Ganesh:
We found the emergence of a South-East Asian head from a buffalo beneath a protecting Indian-looking demon a bit weird:
And I don’t think we’ve seen a lion in India quite this explicit before:
Sorry I missed this grand finale to a great trip. Thanks for the lovely time and excellent organisation!!
Ashamed to say I’d never heard of Vo Trong Nghia so checked out Josh’s piece in Wallpaper and my he’s impressive – was particularly struck by the bamboo bridge. Did you go for a dip?
Hope you had a foliage festooned balcony