A motorbike navigates a hairpin curve on the mountain pass road between Hue and Hoi An.

Central Vietnam

The city most people only fly through

The third city of Vietnam, with the airport that serves the whole centre, a six-kilometre beach and a modern, orderly feel that is unlike anywhere else in the country.

Plan my trip

Orientation

What Da Nang is

Da Nang is the most orderly large city in Vietnam: wide roads, new bridges, a long clean beach and much less chaos than Hanoi or Saigon. It is also the least characterful of the three, which is why most itineraries treat it as an airport with a beach attached and drive straight to Hoi An.

That is usually the right call. Da Nang earns a night in three cases: you land late, you want a resort beach with a city behind it, or you are here to ride the Hai Van pass and the Son Tra headland, which are two of the best short rides in Vietnam.

Nights: 0 to 2
Airport: In the city, 10 minutes from the beach
To Hoi An: 45 minutes
To Hue: 2.5 hours over the pass
Best months: February to August

What to do

What is here

My Khe beach — six kilometres of clean sand with lifeguards, genuinely good from April to August and choppy in winter.
The Marble Mountains — five limestone hills with caves, shrines and a lot of steps, twenty minutes south. Go at opening time; it is airless by mid-morning.
Son Tra peninsula — a forested headland with a road around it, monkeys, and the best coastal views near the city.
The Hai Van pass — the mountain road towards Hue, worth the drive in clear weather and pointless in cloud. Check before you commit the morning.
The Museum of Cham Sculpture — small, excellent, and the best context you will get for My Son before you go there.

Fishing boats float offshore as the illuminated skyline of Da Nang glows at night.

A red-lit cable-stayed bridge glows over the Han River in Da Nang at night, with a Ferris wheel nearby.

A group of tourists poses for a photo at a shrine inside a cave at Marble Mountains near Da Nang.

Travelers pose with raised arms above a curving beach along the coastal road between Hue and Hoi An, Vietnam.

Choosing

Da Nang or Hoi An as a base?

You want	Stay in
Old town atmosphere and evenings out	Hoi An
A big resort with a pool and a gym	Da Nang
Short transfers to the airport	Da Nang
Cycling, rice fields, tailoring	Hoi An
Nightlife beyond the lantern streets	Da Nang

For most travellers, Hoi An. Da Nang for a late arrival, an early departure, or a specific resort.

Timing

Timing and who should skip it

February to August is the dry window and the beach is at its best from April. September to December brings the central storm season, and Da Nang takes the same typhoons as Hoi An, with the same October and November peak.

The city is also the practical hinge of any central itinerary, and worth understanding as one. Everything in the centre is measured from this airport: Hoi An is forty-five minutes south, Hue two and a half hours north over the pass, My Son an hour and a half inland, and Phong Nha a four-hour drive or a short hop to Dong Hoi. If your flights into and out of the centre are fixed, the shape of those four numbers usually decides the order of your days more than any preference does, and it is worth checking them before you book a hotel at either end.

Skip Da Nang entirely if you have twelve days or fewer — the transfer to Hoi An is forty-five minutes and the town is a better place to be. We put it in an itinerary only when the flight times or a particular hotel make it sensible.

Common questions