Day 128 – Hoi An to Da Nang
My Son Ancient Site and Marble Mountain
Today we left on a half day tour of My Son, which was organised from Hoi An Merrily Homestay. The tour cost 250,000 VND / $15.21 AUD per person, which included transport and a guide. We had to pay a further 150,000 VND / $9.13 AUD per person for the entrance fee, which the guide collected as we arrived at My Son.
My Son is an ancient site close to Hoi An, that houses ancient Buddhist temples. It was bombed during the Vietnam War, and had been ransacked by French, Thai and Japanese invaders previously.
On the way to My Son, it started to rain quite heavily. The bus parked near the toilets, and we had to walk to the entrance. The first stop was a two room museum, that briefly introduces the site.
We actually spent too much time in the museum, as we were the only ones left out of the group of 50 people (yes, it was a massive group). We ran further into the site, and we saw the last few people waiting in a line to get on a buggy that would take us to the actual site. We got on too.
After a 5-10 minute ride, we regrouped with the rest of the tour and had to walk to the site. The stone walkway was slippery due to the rain. There were several buildings along the way, to the main site which was a concentration of ancient buildings in various condition of ruin. The site was pretty cool for the history and to see how similar the entire region was back in the day. It was very similar to the ruins of Sri Lanka (Day 13 and Day 14), Thailand (Day 32 and Day 43) and Cambodia (Day 98).
Bus driver having a sneaky smoke while we were stuck in traffic
The journey back from My Son, took a while as the roads were blocked. Once we got back to the town centre, we had a quick lunch and then walked back to the homestay. We had already organised a private car to drop us off at Da Nang via Marble Mountain. The private car, cost us 500,000 VND / $30.43 AUD for two people. The car was also organised through the homestay.
The entrance fee for Marble Mountain was 40,000 VND / $2.43 AUD per person. For extra, you can purchase a lift pass to take you to the top, otherwise there is a 5 minute walk up some stairs. We took the stairs. Since the My Son tour ran overtime, we were told we could only spend 1 hour here instead of the 2 we had originally booked. It felt very rushed and we didn’t get to see everything. Two hours would have been ideal.
The Stairs to Marble Mountain View from top of one of the mountains
When we climbed to the top of the mountains we were able to see views of a very windy beach. The water was really rough, but might be worth checking out on a better day.
Our hour seemed to fly by, so we reluctantly went back to the waiting car. From here we drove just 20 minutes to our hotel, Danang Seawind Beach. In retrospect, we should have just come from Hoi An to Danang and then caught a taxi or Grab (like uber) or walked to Marble Mountain (there were a handful of taxis approaching us as we walked back to the car).
We ended up eating at an Italian Restaurant called L’Italiano, where the owner was extremely friendly and the food was delicious. The food was more expensive than we were used to, but hey, you gotta splash some cash occasionally 🙂