Danang

Well, first thing, when you arrive at the airport, it's a somewhat more difficult task to get a taxi in to town than you'd think. That's because this is the main airport for all those wanting to go to Hoi An, which is south of Danang, and thus taxi drivers will earn a higher fare for taking you there. So we had to negotiate a taxi into town at more than we should have payed, but at some points you don't feel like bargaining anymore. I tend to justify these moments with "Well, we would have payed this much more if we were in the States." Oh well.

So upon arrival at the hotel, the gal at the desk was very helpful, however we had already payed for a night online, and she didn't seem to understand what I was talking about, which eventually resulted in me finding a printer and internet to get the voucher email to show her. Our room was smaller here than anywhere we've stayed- and upon a closer inspection- not so clean either. I wrote the online agency and let them know that the expectations were not met, as well as I'll be notifying Lonely Planet as to the inaccuracies in their description. So when you are booking hotels in Vietnam- go with mid-range places and look them up on Trip Advisor. Oh yeah- the name of the hotel was Binh Duong.

(a follow up to when I started writing this- the booking agency has pulled the hotel from their site and will not use them anymore.)

Anyways, so we chose to go to Danang so that we could make our way out to the Marble Mountains to see this area. This was an interesting place to visit. We took a taxi to the mountains- it's about 12 kilometers from the city. There are 5 peaks that are clustered together, which used to be islands, when this area was surrounded in water. There are carvings of Buddha images done inside several caves throughout the area that are carved right out of the rock that is in the caves. They're quite impressive.

There are also several dozen marble carving shops along the way to the entrance to the site- each one claiming that their old grandfather is the one who carves each of the items in the shop. I don't know how much truth is behind this, but if you're looking to pic up a small marble buddha, or you know- that gigantic front yard lion guard you've always wanted to haul around with you- then this might be to your liking for a look.
When the taxi drops you off, you will be met by one of the women from these shops who will be very helpful, giving you a map and everything, but she'll want you to visit her shop afterwards- and low and behold- she was waiting with her sister on motorbikes at the exit to meet us. We turned down the motorbikes, and said we prefered to walk, which was a mistake as well since we were looking for a taxi and someone pointed us down the street- which we later realized was a ploy to get us to walk down the main shopping road. Oh well, so we end up at the shop that the helpful woman is at, we tell her we need to get a taxi, she says- my sister will call one for you, come inside while you wait- we say that's very nice and thank you but we are not going to buy anything- she says it's okay- just come look- we tell her again okay, but not buying anything. We get in the shop, and the showcase of items begins, everything you can imagine carved from marble, and my only thought it- I am not carrying anything that heavy for the next 2 weeks. So after many "No thank you's" and "Sorry" the taxi does show up, and we pile in and get the heck out of there.

We also went to the Cham Sculpture Museum which is the largest collection of it's kind anywhere.

We spent 2 days in Danang, you could do both the items we saw in one. We took a bus to Hue from here.