Morning Excursion Through Da Nang, Vietnam [Part 1]

Finally Made it to Da Nang, Vietnam

Yesterday was a long travel day, making our way from Sapa back to Hanoi and connecting on our flight to Da Nang, Vietnam. We finally made it to Da nang around 5:30 pm or so. We tried something new by using the 'Grab' app, which is basically like uber or lyft, but very popularly used among Southeast Asian countries. It was very quick, easy, and efficient. Highly recommend Grab if you're ever traveling this side of the globe. You're going to get a much better bang for your buck this way than if you were to take a route taxi or something similar.

Da Nang Cityscape overlooking the Han River

Da Nang is very much different than Sapa, but very similar to Hanoi in many regards. It has a real funky vibe, more of what you would expect when venturing to Vietnam. Scooters everywhere, little side street markets with fresh fruits and vegetables, cafe joints with locals huddled up on the side of the road. It doesn't get any realer than that. Da Nang, however, is a bit more upscale than Hanoi. You can just tell by the infrastructure of buildings and the number of local businesses that have an Ltd. associated with their company. The sidewalks are still rather old, but many streets in Hanoi didn't even have sidewalks. The ones that did were either filled with parked motor bikes, pop up ma and pa food carts, or local vendors trying to sell their crafts to make a living.

This morning @super-irie and I decided to meander around the city to see what it was all about. The very first turn from our hotel, we spotted this local side street, which from a distance, appeared as a market type styled street. We jumped right in and didn't turn back.

Into the morning market rush we go!

There were all sorts of local cuisine options, unique crafts such as trinkets and fresh local incense, and much, much more. There was so much going on, it was difficult to take everything in. The alley with the market was probably a wingspan's length across, but locals still used the lane as if it were a regular street. Scooters zooming through beeping their horn as if they had the right-of-way. In Vietnam, I'm pretty sure this is the case. All pedestrian traffic yields to road traffic since the roadways are outrageously busy all times throughout the day. It's a beautiful scene of organized chaos. Something you have to see for yourself in order to fully understand.

The Lady Conicals!

Check out this lady's fish spread

We walked through the market and continued our aimless trek throughout the city. We ended up stopping at a hair shop where I got a fresh cut and beard trim. @super-irie went for a straight razor shave. The haircut, beard trim, and tip included ended up costing me less than $8 (140,000 VND + 30,000 VND tip). In the states, a haircut plus tip usually costs me $20. Everything over here is dirt cheap.

We'd been venturing around for nearly 3 hours, so we decided to find ourselves a local cafe and have a seat. It took us awhile to find a spot we liked, but eventually we found one. It was a hole in the wall place off a side street with still busy traffic. A table with 4 locals were propped up by the doorway, so we decided to take a seat. We each had ourselves a local iced coffee with condensed milk. We sat and chilled for a minute taking everything in.

My New Vietnamese Friends!

The locals were chatting it up and getting blasted off some Vietnamese beers. It was only noon and they already had a stash collecting underneath their table (see in photo above). You could tell when another beer went down because they got louder and louder with each can hitting the ground. They were very friendly and asked where we were from, how long our stay in Vietnam was, etc. Only one of the four spoke very broken English, acting as a translator for the entire group. They wanted to know how old I was and if I was married back home. They were surprised when I said "no" and that I was, "very handsome." One of the guys couldn't get over my beard because Vietnamese people have a difficult time growing facial hair. It was a really cool scene. We ended up grabbing a photo just before we headed off. Xin chào!

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!