Da Nang was our first stop on our return to SE Asia. After the somewhat stressful consequences of traveling long-haul with a baby and a five-year-old, we were excited to explore some things to do in Da Nang with kids.
If you’re wondering what to do in Da Nang, we hope you get some inspiration from our suggested activities, attractions, and places to visit in this very family-friendly city! We loved our 10 days in Da Nang (which preceded a 6-month stay in nearby Hoi An. Another very family-friendly Vietnam destination!).
We have also shared some great ideas for day trips, overnight trips, or multi-day trips from Da Nang or Hoi An.
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Our first day out exploring Da Nang city
Da Nang, Vietnam, offers some great family activities. First, I’ll share some of the highlights of our first day out exploring Da Nang city and also some of the realities of traveling – just to keep it real.
The best bits
Being strong enough to explore the city on foot all day with 2 kids and a backpack in tow. With our 2 liters of water and the baby, I was likely carrying around 10kg!
Having friendly locals offer to hold the baby so I could eat lunch hands-free. I said yes! Other friendly locals pushed Ayla on the swing at the park while I was tied up with the baby. You don’t need to have 10 arms to parent over here – the village steps in. Finding some decent city playgrounds for Ayla to have fun in and generally just spending time with my girls.
The frustrating bits
Walking around for over an hour in 30 degrees with 2 kids in tow looking unsuccessfully for a shop that sells Vietnamese mobile phone SIM cards. Ayla did so well with all the walking despite the frustration around this.
Having 8 or 9 Grab drivers cancel on us throughout the day while keeping the kids happy.
Changing 3 pooey nappies in undesirable locations. I guess I’ll have to get used to that.
So… We travel, and we see and do amazing things. We also do the normal stuff like trying to figure out how to parent (constant challenges there at the moment), changing nappies, washing, etc. Our life is pretty simple, though, so we don’t have the stresses and strains we might have in a traditional life.
Was our day out on the town worth it? Yes absolutely 100% and I can’t wait to do it all again.
Celebrating my birthday in Da Nang
Yesterday, I (Elly) celebrated 38 years on Earth. My daughter asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said that a day of kind words and happy times with my family would be perfect. She asked if we could go to a water park, and we also thought that would be a cool idea.
My morning started early (5 am with a jet-lagged 5-year-old excitedly waking the family up). It all began amazingly with coffee, flowers, a homemade card, pictures, a homemade telescope (!) and chocolates – perfect choices for a traveling lifestyle where we don’t accumulate “stuff”. We even made a makeshift vase out of the potted plant at our Airbnb, and the chocolate bag with a bin liner inside!
Things deteriorated somewhat soon after that when it became apparent that a certain little person was still rather jetlagged. I soon found myself feeding the baby in the stairwell to allow things to cool off behind closed doors.
Plan B – Sunworld Da Nang (aka AsiaPark Da Nang)
We did a last minute cancellation of the Da Nang waterpark and I offered a plan b. We always actively include our daughter in decisions by giving her choices. The choices today were now: 1. Have a nap (one that actually involves sleep) and go to the local theme park later (which opens at 3 pm each day). 2. Let daddy go to work and celebrate the birthday another day.
Well, as much as she resists sleep and says it’s “boring,” she chose option 1. And after about 2 hours of sleep (a big deal for a girl who hasn’t day-napped since she was 1), the day was looking much brighter!
As you’ll see from the photos, we got to the theme park and had a fab time. This is the second theme park we’ve been to in Asia (the other was in Berastagi, Sumatra, Indonesia), and both have been super cheap and super empty! Sunworld Da Nang cost $17 USD for our whole family. That allowed us to ride to our hearts’ content (no lines!). The staff even had to join the 2 bumper car rides Ayla and Colin took because it’s not quite as fun by yourself! “
Thanks family for a gorgeous birthday. I love you all to the moon and back a million times. What a lucky mama I am.
The fire-breathing dragon – Dragon Bridge
Da Nang by night. We had a quiet day yesterday and waited till late afternoon to head out for a play on the beach and dinner nearby. We were saving our energy to stay out and see the fire-breathing dragon!
Every Saturday and Sunday night at exactly 9 pm the dragon on Dragon Bridge breathes fire… And also water afterward! We certainly felt the heat from the fire, and it was a pretty unique thing to see (first time in my life anyway!)
A daddy-daughter date at Upside Down World
Looks like Colin and Ayla had fun at Upside Down World yesterday while I tried in vain to get some work done (Romy decided it was a day of cat naps).
Ayla loves these places a lot more than we do. They’re basically illusion places where you take fun photos in different rooms. Quite a few of them around SE Asia.
My Khe beach
Da Nang is super easy to get around, and we’ve enjoyed a couple of visits to the beach already. My Khe Beach is probably the cleanest beach we’ve visited in SE Asia so far, and it’s a CITY beach, which is pretty awesome.
There’s not a lot of shade or cafes right on the beach, but you can rent a lounger for 40,000 Dong (about $1.70 US), and there’s no time limit on it, like what we found in Bali (for a much higher price).
The surf is family friendly too, and there are areas marked and roped off for swimming. The sand is gorgeous and golden, and we’ve also found a spot where Ayla can practice her gymnastics skills (I will too in due course!).
So, all up, My Khe beach gets the thumbs-up from us. Hopefully a good sign of things to come with the Hoi An beaches.
Marble Mountains
Below you’ll see a few shots from our girls’ day out at Marble Mountain yesterday. Only a 20-minute drive from the city center in Da Nang, the Marble Mountains are a cluster of five mountains representing five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth).
The scenery is beautiful, and there are a number of caves, pagodas, and natural stone formations to visit. It’s busy… Definitely the most tourists we’ve seen in one place for a long time. But it’s understandable why; there’s real beauty to the place, and I’d definitely recommend it.
There’s an elevator that can be taken up to the main level where you can meander around and see a temple and pagoda and access some of the caves. The walk to this point is also very doable with a basic level of fitness.
The heaven gate lookout requires a bit of a scramble, and the stone steps can be slippery in places. Climbing the steps up and down in most of the caves requires considerable caution, as some are very slippery.
Get some decent walking shoes
I’d highly recommend decent walking shoes or sandals. The number of people doing these things in flip flops astounds me (see our affiliate link to Xero Shoes – they’re our first choice for functional travel shoes and sandals that are made for feet!).
In the main cave at the entrance to marble Mountain (one you pay 20 000 dong to get into – less than $1US) we were lucky to have a kind man help Ayla up and down the steps so I could concentrate on walking and keeping baby safe!
The entrance to the main area, where you’ll find more caves, the temple, and pagodas, is 40 000 dong. Amazingly cheap for a fantastic day out in nature.
The Helio center
We had been told the Helio Center was a good choice of things to do on hot days in Da Nang. However, we soon found out that, like many things for kids in SE Asia, it’s only open in the evening. It’s open from 5:30 pm to 10 pm every day, so we agreed to have a quiet day yesterday before checking it out.
Throughout our time in SE Asia, we’ve noticed that kids operate much later in the evening here – instead of bath and dinner at 5:30 pm, it’s out into the nightlife (and I think I was the only one there quietly trying to fall asleep at 9 pm!).
The Helio Center is located right next to Asia Park/Sunworld (the theme park we visited last week), so much so that they could almost be one and the same. We started with a local dinner at the food stalls outside, then played on the swings. There are a few amusement park rides and games, but Ayla opted to go inside to the indoor play area.
We paid the equivalent of a few dollars, and she could play to her heart’s content on the bouncy castle, in the water play room, the ball pit and boat, with the dress-ups, in the pretend supermarket, restaurant and more. There were also a few other activities you could pay a little extra for, such as painting sculptures.
She played in there until after 9 pm and then wanted to do a little more, but we collectively called it a night. There’s a whole room of arcade games, bowling, a movie theatre and another full play area… Hours more entertainment… But enough stimulation for one night!
Nighttime pop-up play areas
Another example of night time activities for kids in Da Nang! We were meandering along the road about 8 pm (on our way to see the fire-breathing dragon on Dragon Bridge) and came across this wee spot… The perfect option to spend some waiting time.
These are basically pop-up family areas where you can have something to eat or drink, and the kids can jump on a ride, a bouncy castle, or do some crafts or pretend fishing! We’ve seen a couple of them in the city, and there are probably plenty more.
Super cheap entertainment – 10 000 dong per activity… And also 10 000 per beer! Yep, that’s officially 43 cents per item, folks.
We often get asked how we afford to travel full time… More on that another day, but the short answer is that it costs much less for us to slow-travel full time than it does for us to live in NZ. We can also enjoy a better lifestyle while traveling for a fraction of what a comparable lifestyle back home would cost.
We’ll be producing a lot more blog and video content for you this year, and we’ll cover off these sorts of questions in much more detail.
Cool off in a pool
Swimming… It used to be a daily thing for us in SE Asia. Mainly it was super easy in Malaysia because we had an awesome condo set up with a huge pool for 10 months! Ayla was only 3 when we moved there, and by simply playing in the water every day, she learned to swim on her own within weeks (we skipped the floaties altogether).
Since then we haven’t had our own pool, so the swimming has been less frequent, but we try to swim regularly. I usually just look up public swimming pools in Google Maps or go and ask at various villas about whether we can pay to use the pool.
This one is one I found in Google Maps. My Google Maps ventures are always a bit of a gamble. I try to check that they have recent reviews to confirm they actually exist, but it’s no guarantee! When we showed up at this one, I thought the public swimming pool listed must have been taken over by a huge hotel.
However, we soon found out it was part of the hotel. The pool was up on the 4th floor, and we paid about $4 for Ayla to use it. As a bonus, there were comfy lounge chairs where I could breastfeed Romy. This makes it easier to stay a little longer!
Son Tra Mountain
Son Trà Mountain is a fantastic trip to do while in Da Nang. It’s a stone’s throw away from the city but feels like a world away with its winding narrow roads and gorgeous natural scenery.
We packed up our bags to leave Da Nang and head to Hoi An. Since we were so close to Son Trà, we asked the driver to take us on a tour there before we left. A tour around took us a little over 2 hours and cost $ 30 US.
We took the long way around to the main sites (the pagoda and the Lady Buddha), mainly because I don’t think the driver knew what we wanted! But that meant we got the full authentic experience, navigating the tiny, winding road and enjoying its full beauty.
Yes, it was a hazy day, but it had been hazy every day, and we wanted to take the opportunity while we were there. Still beautiful and a wonderful end to our time in Da Nang.
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