← All articles · Vietnam · 16 October 2019

Da Nang, Vietnam: Six weeks of vegan lunches and a beach at the end of the road

Da Nang in autumn 2019: macrobiotic set lunches, a corn seller at Con Market, monsoon rain on a wooden table and My Khe beach under a grey dusk.

Plenty of people give Da Nang a night on the way to somewhere prettier. We gave it six weeks, from early September to mid October 2019, and it turned out to be the sort of city that rewards staying put: a beach you can walk to, a market that feeds the whole place, and more good vegan food than we knew what to do with.

The lunches that kept us here

The first thing we found, and then kept going back to, was a macrobiotic place in the Son Tra side of town.

Inga standing on the pavement beside a hand-painted wooden sign reading Bao An Macrobiotic Vegan Restaurant, 56 Hoang Bich Son, in front of a low wooden-fronted building — Bao An, at 56 Hoang Bich Son. Hand-painted sign, wooden shopfront, and the reason we stopped looking for anywhere else.

A macrobiotic set plate of brown rice, seaweed, wilted greens, fried tofu slices, pickled cucumber, cabbage with peanuts and carrot, beside a bowl of miso soup on a weathered wooden table — The set plate: brown rice in the middle, seaweed, greens, fried tofu, pickles, and a bowl of miso to the side. We ate a lot of these.

A close-up bowl of Vietnamese noodles topped with fried tofu, spring rolls, roasted peanuts, sliced mock ham, sweet potato, carrot and chopped spring onion — Noodles under a landslide of peanuts, tofu, spring rolls and whatever else was going. Nobody in Da Nang seems to believe in a small portion.

Inga holding chopsticks at a wooden table with a plate of Vietnamese sushi rolls and a whole young coconut, in front of a wall painted with cacti and a grey mountain mural — A cactus mural, a young coconut and a plate of rolls. Da Nang does a good line in cheerful little rooms.

Inga seated at a dark carved wooden table set with noodle soup, a plate of herbs, chilli sauce and two tall green smoothies, surrounded by pots of pink and white orchids — Somewhere altogether grander: carved blackwood furniture, orchids on every surface, and two green smoothies we absolutely didn't need.

Con Market, and the rest of the city

All of it starts at Cho Con, the market that supplies half of Da Nang. It's hot, loud, stacked to the ceiling, and full of people who find a wandering foreigner mildly hilarious.

A smiling vendor in a conical hat holding up an ear of sweetcorn behind trays of shredded green papaya, carrot, beansprouts, cabbage and limes at Con Market in Da Nang — Stall 17 at Cho Con, and the best sales pitch we saw all month. We bought the corn.

Inga's hands fanning out seven 500,000 Vietnamese dong notes over a dark granite kitchen counter — Rent day. Vietnamese dong makes everyone feel briefly like a cartoon villain.

Inga standing arm in arm with a smiling young Vietnamese woman on a tiled courtyard, with a palm tree and a brick wall behind them — Staying a while means you stop being a guest. This is one of the reasons six weeks went so fast.

September and October are the wet end of the year here, and the rain doesn't so much fall as arrive.

Heavy rain falling on an empty wooden table and stools outside a cafe, with a small potted plant in the middle of the table and wet green foliage behind — The monsoon clearing a terrace in about four seconds. The pot plant held its ground.

Wide empty sand at My Khe beach at dusk with swimmers in the surf and the pale high-rise towers of Da Nang along the shoreline behind — My Khe at dusk. Miles of sand, a city skyline on one side, and locals swimming long after the light has gone.

We used Da Nang as a base rather than a stop, and day-tripped from it: Hoi An is under an hour down the coast and got most of our evenings. Elsewhere in Vietnam we'd already done Hanoi, Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh City. And if you're flying out of here with time to spare, we've written up both the Vanda Lounge and the CIP Orchid Lounge at the airport.