brittanyshemmeld fellow

Ba Na Hills and The Golden Bridge

Da Nang, Vietnam

The main reason we even went all the way to Da Nang, a 16 hour bus ride from Hanoi, was purely to see the beautiful "Golden Bridge", which you might've seen in pictures already, with the big hands. When we got there, we discovered that the Ba Na Hills was so much more than just this, in fact the bridge was just a small part of everything there was to see and do.

Europe or Southeast Asia?? Europe or Southeast Asia??

Getting to Ba Na Hills

All over Da Nang city you will see advertisements for "Sun World" which is part of the Ba Na Hills attraction. It's probably Da Nang's number 1 thing to do, aside from wondering the gorgeous built up streets full of great restaurants and nightlife near the beach. From our accommodation, we hired a scooter for 120 000 vietnam dong (around $7 AUD) and rode around 1.5 hours through the gorgeous but hectic city and up through the mountains. Make sure you have downloaded offline google maps or something of the sort! We got lost but thank god we found some other westerners who we pulled over and asked to follow them there. Many hotels and hostels offer tours to Ba Na Hills for around 900 000vnd, which includes the entry fee of a whopping 750 000vnd, so it might even be more efficient to just do a tour where you sit in an airconditioned mini van there and back, without any hastle.

Gorgeous bridge at the entrance of Ba Na Hills Gorgeous bridge at the entrance of Ba Na Hills

When you arrive, and you pay the large entry fee (which is very much worth it!!), you'll make your way to the cable car which is the longest cable car in the world at over 5km! It's a beautiful and relaxing experience, looking over the vietnamese mountains and down at the trees and waterfalls below. The entry fee gets you into all the 3 cable cars which take you to different areas in the mountains, the bridge, the Ba Na Hills town, and the theme park.

View from the cable car View from the cable car

Once we were at the top, we made our way to the bridge first, before it got too busy. The bridge itself was smaller than we expected, but still absolutely stunning, and the view down below was just incredible. The only strange thing about all of it was how new it all was, the bridge was only built in 2018 to add to the existing Ba Na Hills resort, a french leisure destination which was founded in 1919 for french tourists to come and stay at when in Vietnam. Located 1.5km above sea level, it is a lot cooler up there for tourists to manage the sweltering heat.

Golden Bridge Golden Bridge

From bridges to giant buddhas, to bumper cars to rollercoaster rides, there is nothing exciting that this place doesn't have. There's crazy rides, giant chess boards, beautiful gardens and even a wax museum! You could easily spend the entire day wondering around, and stopping to rest at one of the dozens of restaurants and french coffee shops in the incredible hills.

From the Golden Bridge you take a walk to the second set of cable cars to go further up into the BaNa Hills for the little fake french city. It is absolutely awesome.

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