Da Nang, Vietnam

Finally, a less touristy, medium-sized city with a sizable college student population!

On our second night here, we met several people from Couch Surfing which is a way for travelers to stay with hosts on their couches, have cultural exchanges, practice languages, and make friends. First we went for coffee with Yung (sounds like Yoom), a friend of our Couch Surfing host named An, then hung out with others from the community at a very "local" outdoor restaurant. They ate delicacies like quail eggs and stingray spring rolls. Then we went to the river and walked along the boardwalk. We learned that a recording that played when a guy drove around on a bike was advertising ears of corn. I bought some and it's really good! It was white corn instead of yellow and a bit chewier but was easier to eat and didn't get stuck in my teeth.

An, me, Carlos, and Yung outside of the Champa Sculpture Museum

An and Wong showed us a vegetarian (chay in Vietnamese) restaurant called Long Hoa where we get meals for $0.50 each and amazing service. The owner makes a special effort to make us happy, giving us free soup and water. He insists on calling us family and got mad today when a waiter attempted to charge us the typical foreigner price (saving us a total of $1 USD). He even gave us a 1.5 L bottle of soy milk when we said we had trouble finding a place to buy it.

The first floor of An's house

Our bedroom on the 2nd floor

We stayed one night at An's house which was typical, although very basic, and quite the experience for us! There was no AC (or air-con as it's called here) and we slept on some blankets on the floor under a mosquito net in front of a fan. It was still about 80 degrees inside and I felt like I couldn't breathe. It was hard for Carlos to get comfortable on the floor. We managed to sleep about 5 hours then took a nap later that morning when it was cooler. After apologizing to An for being pampered Westerners, we got a hotel with wifi, a Jacuzzi tub, king size bed, 2 desks, and medium size fridge. However, that wasn't the end of our hot nights as the electricity went out last night for about 6 hours during which we had no AC or fan. I solved the problem of the heat and the mosquitoes by using a wet towel as a blanket.

Our hotel for most of our stay in Da Nang

Then we went to Cham Sculpture Museum and Marble Mountain (My Son) with An and Yung. We learned that the Cham people were a bit obsessed with fertility (shown by the numerous mammary and phallic symbols in their sculptures) and that animals are often pictured with a gem in their mouths to show that they protect wealth.

Champa fertility sculpture

The best thing we've seen on our trip so far was the “Cave of Hell” at Marble Mountain. If you think Christians have a twisted view on the subject, this was even creepier! You walk up to the staircase on a small bridge with sculpted hands reaching out of the water on each side. The cave is normally lit up by green lights during tour hours but since we arrived late, we brought our own flashlights to show the way (and thus got in free). Soon, we came upon graphic, violent scenes depicting what happens to those who commit adultery or other sins. They are tied up to poles and beaten or shackled to the floor while rats eat their intestines. There are skeleton masks tucked into crevasses in the ceiling.

Get the joke?

One of the coolest areas was a large cavern that led up to a statue of Buddha. Thousands of bats congregated on the ceiling and were freaked out when we came in with our flashlights. They started flying around, swooping toward our heads. There were also countless crickets and large cave spiders that we tried to avoid shining our lights on so we could pretend they weren't there. When Carlos would try to scare Yung, she kept saying, "I don't care" which soon became a running joke among the 4 of us.

We also went to a Young Leaders Club meeting to talk to 15-20 Vietnamese students about life as travelers and Americans. They were curious about our culture, how independent and confident we are (not all of us, as we explained!), what we worry about, how to get over a fear of traveling and not being able to speak local languages. After the official meeting, we split into 2 groups to played 20 Questions. My team lost all 3 matches (by only 1 question, I might add!) and our "punishment" was to sing and dance in front of everyone which actually ended up being everyone doing the Chicken Dance, Macarena, as well as Thai and Malaysian social dances. I'm not normally one for such a public display of silliness but I felt so comfortable with everyone, who were so welcoming and smiling that I wasn't nervous at all. We went out for coffee afterward with Nghia, whom we met there, and some of his foreigner friends from Romania, the Netherlands, and China. We've only met a few Americans on our travels so far which is quite eye opening to the vast scale of the world.


The video posts won't work so here are links to the dancing videos Part One and Part Two on YouTube.


Another night we went to a cafe with live music with Yung and An. The shop was owned by 4 students and had 3 guys playing acoustic guitar along 5 singers that would switch out between songs. They played mostly Vietnamese love songs but a few were in English. I'm not much of a coffee drinker back home due to being sensitive to caffeine but decided to try Vietnamese coffee which was AMAZING!! Perfect flavor, no bitterness. It was served cold in a small glass to which you can add ice, sugar, or milk.

On our last night here, we visited a dessert shop with exotic Asian sweets like agar pudding which is similar to vegan jello, various types of beans and lentils (yes, sweet!), sticky rice with coconut and hazelnuts, and rice with taro. Hopefully An will come open up a shop like this in America!