Danang was a bit of a write-off. We originally planned two days there, but changes to our flight prompted by the airline and probably the reduction in travellers due to coronavirus meant we only got two nights and one day (arrive 10:30pm one night, have one day, stay the night, fly out 9am the day after).
We were booked on a tour to go to Sunworld, Bana Hills. They couldn't quite tell us what it was, though. We thought there might be some cultural things happening.
It turned out to be a low-key entertainment park of the Disney-esque kind. Some fake historical places (temples built in the old style), a fake European village, places to eat, some gardens with nicely arranged flowers, and a funpark with rides and stuff. It's not as bad as the entertainment parks I remember of my childhood (Australia's Wonderland seemed particularly grotesque in my memory), but it's not great either. And it wasn't what we'd hoped to see. But we didn't have any way to exit from the situation, so we were stuck there for the entirety of the tour - from 8:30am in the morning until 5:30pm in the evening.
At 5:30pm we were returned to the hotel and were promptly off elsewhere - on a tour to Hoi An. Originally, we'd been talked into going to a show, but my father suggested that was entirely unnecessary and so we cancelled it so we'd just walk around.
Frankly, if we'd spent the entire day at Hoi An, it would have been exactly what we wanted. There was an 'old city' tour, where you could pay a set amount of money and visit a set number of locations that were all historical and had interesting museums on them. Ones detailing the history of the port city, the movement of goods, the cultural background of the area...all the things that we would have loved to spend a day on.
So.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City early on Friday morning and have been pretty busy since.
We were booked on a tour to go to Sunworld, Bana Hills. They couldn't quite tell us what it was, though. We thought there might be some cultural things happening.
It turned out to be a low-key entertainment park of the Disney-esque kind. Some fake historical places (temples built in the old style), a fake European village, places to eat, some gardens with nicely arranged flowers, and a funpark with rides and stuff. It's not as bad as the entertainment parks I remember of my childhood (Australia's Wonderland seemed particularly grotesque in my memory), but it's not great either. And it wasn't what we'd hoped to see. But we didn't have any way to exit from the situation, so we were stuck there for the entirety of the tour - from 8:30am in the morning until 5:30pm in the evening.
At 5:30pm we were returned to the hotel and were promptly off elsewhere - on a tour to Hoi An. Originally, we'd been talked into going to a show, but my father suggested that was entirely unnecessary and so we cancelled it so we'd just walk around.
Frankly, if we'd spent the entire day at Hoi An, it would have been exactly what we wanted. There was an 'old city' tour, where you could pay a set amount of money and visit a set number of locations that were all historical and had interesting museums on them. Ones detailing the history of the port city, the movement of goods, the cultural background of the area...all the things that we would have loved to spend a day on.
So.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City early on Friday morning and have been pretty busy since.
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