Sometimes, you just have to give up and tell yourself: it's a rainy day and I'm not going anywhere. To focus on doing something productive indoors instead of losing time on attempts to go out between rain and shower, downpour and drizzle. That's what I am doing today, editing images and writing posts at the ground floor of the Kon-Tiki Hostel with (unexpected) socks on my feet. It's +25, the floor is tiled and it's coldish to walk barefoot.

Pretty empty here: a Vietnamese girl is at the reception desk a few meters away and a traveler, seemed a Myanmar one, is hunching over his mobile in the far corner. It's quiet here except mild traffic noises and distant screams of fans from a nearby sports bar. Thor Heyerdahl's images are on the wall: his portrait and the scene of him traveling on the raft from South America to Polynesia in 1947, known as the Kon-Tiki expedition. That's why the name of the hostel. And this is my own "expedition" to a faraway land, much more humble:

Two-day bus trip from Bangkok to Da Nang City (on Google.Maps). I've already had a post about Da Nang beach, let me share my impression about the street life. Considering this is not my first stay in Da Nang where I've spent several months altogether in my life.

Streets

A typical Vietnamese street just so you know:

Street traffic mostly consisted of motorbikes (much less cars than in Thailand), rows of townhouses with shops and restaurants at the ground floor and on sidewalks, and groups of motorbikes parked on sidewalks.

There are bundles of black wires hanging on Da Nang streets in the same way as in Thailand but no mysterious writings in ภาษาไทย on shop signs like in the Land of Smiles, only short words, syllables, written in large colorful Latin letters with numerous marks above and below, indicating shades of sound.

You sometimes walk the roadway in Vietnam since the sidewalk occupied by bikes, shop stands, stalls, plastic chairs and tables of seedy street restaurants; recently, I even saw a a man-sized billboard that completely blocked the sidewalk. This is Vietnam. But the peculiarity of Da Nang is that its newly-built areas are designed with an unexpected for Asia breadth, so that you sometimes find yourself separated from other people by tens of meters.

People

People are super lovely, look at this lady, for example:

There are also typical characters in the background. One person is resting, wearing a motorbike helmet, on a red plastic chair, a guy, next to him, looks like, is cooking for the first one. The cook has a motorbike helmet on his head too. Why not?

Do they sleep in helmets too?.. Probably not. Let's zoom in a character in boxers in the background:

Yes, he definitely just woke up, still in the "bed" parked right in the city center. Why not?

It cannot be said that it was the Vietnamese who invented that a motorbike is also a sofa, science simply doesn’t know that, still. But we can confidently state that the art of reclining on motorbikes reaches its highest level exactly in Vietnam.

The central street of Da Nang (Trần Phú), a man in Grab app uniform reclines on his motorbike blocking the sidewalk. Why the fuck not?

Although I am sarcastic in this post, I think the Vietnamese are nice people.

Moreover, I don't think, I know it.

I have an experience of living in Da Nang for several months and I can say that experience was great about people, exceptional.

Da Nang does not live solely on tourism, but there is plenty of it here. But, despite the corrupting power of this industry, Da Nang people are not inclined to fool foreigners, cheat, or despise them - on the contrary, the locals are honest and friendly. I'm sure there are scammers and scumbags here, but it goes without saying - there are some in every country.

Attitudes towards photography vary. Women aren't always happy to be photographed by male strangers but some of them can ask to be photographed like these ones.

As for men, they always super friendly if you ask them to pose. And they don't mind to be photographed by a unknown male traveler since they understand that travelers are curious about everything, like children.

More images and stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out the previous ones on my personal Pinmapple map.

I took the images with a Nikkor 50mm on a full frame Nikon D750 in October, 2023 in
Da Nang, Vietnam.