Itinerary

3 Days in Da Nang and Hoi An: A Day-by-Day Plan That Does Not Rush You

Three days is enough for central Vietnam if you accept one thing: you are not going to do all of it. This is the version we would give our own parents, with the afternoons left alone.

Three days is enough for central Vietnam if you accept one thing at the start: you are not going to do all of it. Every plan that tries ends up as a list of places you drove past.

This is the version we would give our own parents. One substantial thing each morning, the afternoons left alone, and the evenings used properly — because the evenings here are better than the middays.

The shape of the three days

Three rules hold the plan together.

1. One demanding thing per day, in the morning. Heat, crowds and your own legs all get worse after midday.
2. Nothing scheduled between about one and four. This is not laziness. It is what makes the evening possible.
3. One day stays unbooked. Day 3 is deliberately flexible, because the one attraction here that can be ruined by weather is the one you must be able to move.

Day 1 — Da Nang to Hoi An, the slow way

Most people transfer between the two cities as a dead forty minutes. Spend the morning on it instead and it becomes the best-structured day of the three.

Morning: Marble Mountains

Leave Da Nang by about eight. The Marble Mountains are on the way, the caves are at their quietest early, and the stone has not yet absorbed the day’s heat.

Take the lift up. Allow ninety minutes to two hours: the big cave with the light coming through the roof, the pagoda, and the summit if stairs are not an issue. Walk down the old staircase at the end, when nothing depends on your legs any more.

Gentle version

Lift both ways, the large cave and the pagoda only, skip the summit climb. You will have seen the best of it and spent an hour on your feet rather than two.

Middle of the day: arrive in Hoi An, and stop

Carry on to Hoi An — about forty to fifty minutes — check in, eat, and do nothing until four o’clock. This is the most important instruction on the page and the one most often ignored.

Late afternoon and evening: the old town

From four o’clock the heat has gone, the light turns, and the town becomes the place in the photographs. Buy the old town ticket and use three of the five entries now, while the sites are still open — one assembly hall, one old merchant house, one museum.

Then stop trying to see things. Be on the far bank of the river about fifteen minutes before dark, when the lanterns are lit and the sky is still blue. Eat. Take the boat out onto the river if you want to. Stay past nine thirty if you can, when the crowd thins and the town is at its best. Full detail in Hoi An at night.

Day 2 — Hoi An, river and old town

Morning: the coconut forest

The Bay Mau basket boats are about ten minutes east of the old town. Go early or leave it until late afternoon — the middle of the day is when the loudspeakers and the spinning boats take over.

Forty-five minutes on the water, then back. It is a short activity and it does not need to fill a morning.

Gentle version

Skip it entirely. Getting down into a round boat from a floating dock is the single hardest physical movement in these three days. A cyclo tour of the old town and a long breakfast is a perfectly good substitute.

Afternoon: nothing, again

Rest. Swim if your hotel has a pool. The beach between the two cities is wide and long and almost nobody on a three-day itinerary ever gets to it.

Evening: the quiet half of the old town

Use the remaining entries on your ticket in the late afternoon, then cross the river and walk away from the night market. The far bank has tables on the water and a fraction of the crowd. Walk west, upstream, past the end of the lit section, and you will have the glow of the town behind you and the street to yourself.

Day 3 — the flexible day

Look out of the window first. Then choose.

If the sky is clear: Ba Na Hills

Go early, on the first cable cars. The mountain makes its own weather and cloud builds through the day. Allow a full morning and most of the afternoon — it is further and bigger than people expect.

If the mountain is under cloud: do not go

This is why the day is flexible. A grey day at Ba Na costs you a non-refundable ticket and gives you a walk across a famous bridge you cannot see. On a grey day, do Da Nang instead.

The Da Nang alternative

• The riverside promenade, which is flat, modern and the easiest walking in the region.
• The Museum of Cham Sculpture — indoors, manageable, and the best single explanation of what stood here before Vietnam did.
• The Son Tra peninsula by car, for the coast road and the view back over the city.
• The beach.

What the sightseeing costs

Add transport, food and the river boat, none of which have a fixed published price. What the table shows is that entrance fees are not the expensive part of central Vietnam — which is worth knowing when you are deciding whether to skip something to save money. Skip it because you do not want to do it, not because of the ticket.

Where to base yourself

Three honest options, and the trade-off is always the same: the evening or the morning.

• All three nights in Hoi An. Best if the old town is what you came for. The evenings are the payoff and you are in them rather than driving back from them. Day 3 becomes a longer drive.
• All three nights in Da Nang. Better hotels at the price, a proper beach, flat pavements, closer to the airport and to Ba Na. You pay for it with a forty-minute drive home after every Hoi An evening.
• Split — two nights Hoi An, one in Da Nang. What we would usually do, with the Da Nang night last so the final morning is near the airport. The cost is one extra hotel change, which with luggage is not nothing.

What we would change for different travellers

• If stairs are a concern: take the gentle version of Day 1, drop the basket boats, and use Day 3 for Da Nang rather than Ba Na. See how much walking is really involved.
• If you only have two days: drop Day 3. Ba Na is the most weather-dependent and the most tiring of the three, and the other two days hold up on their own.
• If you have four: add Hue, as a long day trip over the pass, or a day doing nothing at all on the beach. We would take the beach.
• If you are travelling in October or November: read the best time to visit before you fix any of this. The old town floods most years.

Common questions