Our return to Danang, Vietnam

Phillip and I are now over halfway thru this trip, with no more new countries to visit, but we do have new locations in our favorite countries to see before we return home in five weeks. We have been in Danang, Vietnam for the past few days, arriving via a flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand. We've been to Danang before but on our previous visit, we didn't see its famous Golden Bridge.

During our first day in Danang, we walked along the beach and were pleased to see the exhibit of decorated basket boats. I don't know how often they update the paintings, but these were totally different scenes on these bamboo boats than what we'd seen before.

Yesterday, I booked us a tour to visit Ba Na Hills, a resort/amusement park-like area about 20 km north of Danang. This is where the Golden Bridge is as well as the world's longest non-stop cable car. Everyone must take the cable car to the attractions area and the first thing you see as you get to the top, is the Golden Bridge's hands.

It looks like a bridge held up by two giant concrete hands. 

And, several hundred of our closest friends joined us to walk on the bridge for pictures! 

The Ba Na Hills complex encompasses several hundred acres at the top of the mountain. We found another, smaller hand statue in one of the gardens.

Everywhere you turned, there were landscaped gardens like this peacock-themed one.

The complex had an alpine roller coaster and several arcade areas that we did not visit. It also had a multitude of restaurant and an area with a European village theme. We didn't find that very authentic because the cobblestones were too smooth and evenly laid! Next to the Rose Garden (not many roses blooming that day), we found about ten of these guys in a row. Not sure what they were meant to represent.

We also walked by the Helios Waterfall, with its gaudy gold statues. Not a fan at all because it reminded us of someone else who favors garish gold-colored furnishings.

We quickly moved on to another garden area, with stairs leading up to a temple. 

After three hours at the top of Ba Na Hills, our tour group came together again and rode the cable car back down the mountain.  Even the trip down had sights to see, carved into the rock of the mountain.

We were able to also see the construction supply area. A lot of concrete is needed, as more buildings were being added to the complex.

Today, we took a Grab to Marble Mountain, just 7 km away, and toured it on our own. According to the legend, a dragon flew from a nearby beach and laid an egg. A beautiful girl hatched out of the egg and the eggshell broke into five pieces, forming five mountains. These are the Marble Mountains, and they are five connected mountains that jut up from flat land of the area. Pagodas and temples have been built into the mountains for over 400 years. Only one mountain, Water Mountain, is accessible to tourists. We paid for an elevator ride up (15k VND, less than $1) but it stopped halfway to the top. Steps the rest of the journey. We saw many Buddhas, outside statues 

and ones carved inside caves from marble.

Large Buddhas,

and Buddhas in large caves.

And those steps... still hundreds of steps after the elevator. Notice that they are not level or the same height. Also, some were marble (slick) and some were concrete (not slippery).

We walked down from the top of the mountain and returned to our hotel to cool down.

Tomorrow (Friday, the 29th), we head two hours south to stay in one of our favorite locations, Hoi An.