Must Know Vietnam Travel Tips to Danang & Hoi An | Vietnam Series Ep. 1

we finally made it to Vietnam so in this video I'm going to share with you guys my top things you need to know when first coming to Danang so we've traveled outside of Japan and we've made it to Vietnam specifically Danang and I wanted to take you around this city and kind of show you the things that I've learned on this short trip that have you been here there's a lot of things that I didn't know about when first coming here but along the way and after a lot of research and just some trial and error I figured out some things and I thought that might be useful for you guys if you're coming to Vietnam or the Danang area and this video is capping off our Vietnam series there's more videos to come about Street food places luxury hotels and all sorts of places in Vietnam so definitely if you want to see more of these kind of videos it does subscribe button and the Bell button so you don't miss any of them and if you want to know what I'm doing on a daily basis or what I'm eating all the time definitely check out my Instagram account I post stories every day and if you want to help support the channel I got cool Tokyo shirts and even samurai shirt I'll leave a link in description so with that all said let me share with you guys my tips and tricks to navigate through the Nang Vietnam let's do this all right so let's talk about where to stay in Danang the reason I want to talk about this is when I was first coming to the Nang myself I didn't know where I wanted to stay and that was kind of like the thing I didn't find a lot of information on and so I wanted to kind of spend a little time on just talking about where you're going to stay when you're staying at the Neng now you pretty much have three options you can save beats ride you can stay seaside or you can say kind of like the outer parts of Danang which is like either down the north or the south side of the city and the beach area the beach side to me is a little more calm it's just a long strip you do have these amazing views and if you want to just go to city then you could take a taxi there are more seafood restaurant options by the beach like the ones where you get to pick up the live seafood from the tanks or buckets and then the staff weigh it out in front of you I personally enjoyed this process and I think it's more reasonably priced so feel like me the beach side may be your best choice hotels around me KB look quite similar small skinny and older and they seem to be built all around the same time if we go a bit more south around me on beach I noticed a lot of larger hotels but also relatively dated on the city side it's a little more like packed and crammed in it's not the cleanest of cities so it is still kind of developing and you'll find that there's a lot of traffic and people honking but you will find that there's a more variety of food on the city side there's a lot more coffee shops on the city side you'll find that the hotels are generally cheaper now if you're looking for something a little bit more luxurious in terms of your stay then up north and down south are the really really nice hotels aren't actually gonna be staying at some really nice hotels coming up so subscribe to the series because that's gonna just blow your mind now I ended up staying at the hotel side and I'm actually happy that I did but I think that's because of my preference on how to spend the holidays I actually enjoy being right next to the beach and if you look just out this way I have this amazing view just overlooking the ocean the beach so I'm actually quite happy that I decided to go beachside and it's actually not that far from the city itself because you can take a taxi but more about the taxi and food options later on in this video one of the things I like to do is go for runs in the morning or you can do that in the the city side but it's just quite busy could probably run alongside the river but here you can just run along the beach which is just completely amazing every morning so if you want to have kind of like a healthy running style vacation going beachside is probably a nice thing so the hotel that I'm staying you guys are probably wondering I'm staying at the Paris deli Hotel which actually isn't that bad I like I like the area that again the view is amazing the location is great room I actually personally like myself my wife on the other hand doesn't like it so much just because she thinks how do I put this nicely if thinks the cleaning could be a little bit better than it is so maybe if you are you into to cleanliness then maybe a pair of selling hotel is not for you but if you look down this trip there's a lot of hotels that are similar to Paris deli like it looks like they're all built and during the same time but a la carte day is probably looks like it's a little bit newer than the rest of them we haven't been inside but that's probably what we would look into staying public the next time you come here and this is the beach and in fact this area that we're in is a bit south from Paris telling the hotel that we were at earlier what you'll find is that it actually has a larger hotel stay like this sitting and lounge areas on the beach was all also nice and they even have like these nice bars in fact this hotel holid it looks like they have a tunnel that goes underground directly to the beach so that you don't have to cross the street which like get a bit hairy cuz there's just so much traffic going back and forth overall though like I like this kind of area and what's nice is just running perpendicular to the beach there's a really like wide road it has kind of a a tourist trap vibe you don't see as many locals there and you see like a lot more tourists they have a lot of souvenir shops they have massage shops it just feels like a more tourist friendly area I don't know I think if we were to stay on this like Danang beachside area this might be actually a better spot for us to stay because the the beach is nicer and then just right here we were actually able to rent some boogie boards we're able to your ex's are able to run some surfboards and actually surf in this area so maybe it's kind of like a better section than up north where we're staying at right now and this Beach area is just super nice like the sand itself I don't know oh I just got sand all over my school and then homeless Mike goes drink so the sand itself feels really nice very very fine sand the waves are fun to play with because it's like a constant rolling way just all along the beach and the waves can get pretty big so you got to kind of watch out and like getting swept away but like one of the nice surprises is the beach itself how do you say how pristine it still is despite all the tourists in fact I know maybe this isn't the high season right now but there's not a lot of tourists around so you'll get like spots where you can almost feel like you're by yourself on the beach you're not like inundated with people and crowds you do feel it's like the private beach that you wanted but like depending on the section you are then there are still like people around I've been to several beach countries like for example I've been to Phuket I've been to Boracay when you're sitting at the beach you'll find a lot of people trying to sell you things even like little kids like coming up and like trying to sell you like little trinkets or sunglasses trying to build a castle for you you don't get a lot of that here maybe we were approached by one person selling sunglasses but aside from that we weren't really approached so you feel less bothered by people trying to sell you goods which is really nice I don't know why that is maybe it's just Vietnam in general and one thing you always will have to be careful of like we're on the beach right here there's no stoplights so you have to be really careful with the traffic when crossing pricing is always tricky because there's not a lot of streetlights here so basically you just have to go when traffic kind of slows down but in the middle of the day sometimes there's no letdown so just kind of like wait hey there we go now we're on this side about these guys gonna break there we go there's not a lot of stoplights so you're like having to play Frogger with your light out on these streets and it does get a bit hairy in summer like the city areas where the traffic gets really really busy and what I found is instead of running walking and like making yourself like an apparent obstacle to them is probably safer than running across the street and they'll go just like kind of weave around you but if you like try to dart then they might not be able to predict how fast you're moving so if you're crossing the street maybe one of my tips would be just tilt kind of walk at a normal pace instead of like run even though you're kind of scared all right time to talk about the city area so when you think of the city area don't expect something that's really really developed well you'll find it like when you actually start walking the streets a lot of the sidewalks are like quite hard to walk on because they're very uneven some of the roads aren't finished completely just wanted to share that with you before we like to take you into the city in terms of like tourist spots the biggest tourist spots here are just in front of me the Dragon Bridge the highlight of Dragon Bridge is definitely at night it's lit up in all different colors and at 9 p.

m.

on weekends and holidays that dragon boats fire and water unfortunately I couldn't make it on time to catch the event but I believe the best spot to watch this is around the sea lion area on the beachside there are street vendors and you'll see many people hanging out around this area another tourist spot is the Catholic cathedral you won't find a lot of pink churches so a lot of tourists go to that but for me it wasn't too exciting so this is danang cathedral and it was it built in 1923 it's pretty unique because you don't see a lot of Catholic churches with weather vane that's still didn't sound right whether being caught caught whether other popular streets on the city side is one this street that we're on now is called rock Don Street and it runs parallel to the Han River just reading the Dragon Bridge and the Han bridge and once read over is draw Tran who supposed to be had like a tourist treat with a lot of shopping and subs but I didn't really see a lot going on aside from like some minor shopping some coffee shops you can also check out the marble statues on buck Dunn Street which is another tourist spot but I found it a bit lackluster so it wasn't for me one thing to note though there's absolutely nothing going on to stop the Dragon Bridge as it's filled with empty lots maybe in the future there'll be some development here what I found interest interesting is that the coffee shops here seem to be like the busiest social like location where everyone likes to gather and meet it's almost like Starbucks on steroids like there's so many people gather and like all these different coffee shops it's like they sit and talk all day and I haven't found the reason why maybe you guys can let me know if you know so as you can see there's actually not a lot going on in the city but the silver lining staying on the city side is that a whole slew of restaurants and bars in places just to like hang out with your friends like the coffee shops so if you're looking for that food and drink experience then I would say the city side is more your speed but again you can always just take a taxi from the beachside it's only a few minutes and to travel to the city side alright so let's talk food if you guys are looking too sexy what to eat as an egg then this is going to be part of the series and be sure not to miss that video if you're really into food is definitely subscribe but in general that food is relatively inexpensive here in Danang now you can get a chicken and rice dish for like 2 bucks see this even in fact is pretty inexpensive as well if you're sticking with like shrimp clams even snails for some reason the lobsters and the fish are I found on the higher side like they're charging like 2 to 2.

5 million dong for a kilo of lobster which is roughly like a little over a hundred dollars but maybe it's because we're in the winter and it's out of season and it's maybe harder to catch I'm not quite sure but it's like the prices are really really expensive from what I found one thing that I found a really really cheap are the beers even at restaurants you're paying like a dollar or a beer and instead of like ordering beers what they'll do to order a case of beer and they'll just send it back to the side maybe this is only like got a couple restaurants where they do that but get them as they want and then they give the customers props of ice and then they just pour the beers into the ice and they drink them like that so it gets kind of watered down but it like at least you know like really cold beers and another table manner I noticed maybe a cultural thing instead of the server's collecting the beer bottles throughout dinner customers were just leaving two empty bottles up around their people I don't know that is they actually have like garbage cans right underneath the table which is also quite interesting they just like monument oh you're trash of it which is nice in the sense of is gonna throw stucco hey on the floor I know I understand them in a different country that's cool that's actually like fine with me but I think speaking to you guys that are traveling to Vietnam for the first time you might just want to prepare yourself for this kind of eating culture here in Vietnam it might not be as intently from where you come from also another thing you wanna consider is credit cards versus cash a lot of these like like stalls at places that aren't like nice like restaurants they only accept cash so be prepared to have cash too when you're eating and the places that do accept credit cards you also need to be careful with what type of credit card you have I haven't B's a card which seems to be generally accepted but my wife she has a knack merican Express and nowhere does it work so again like visa is okay but other credit cards don't work sometimes when you're a little bit tired and don't want to go out you can actually order for the year which kind of makes it which is kind of nice we use an app called foodie a very useful app here a lot of people use it for food reviews like in the States we have Yelp in Japan we have tapioca here in Vietnam they use an app called foodie and it not only has reviews but it also has a delivery service that you can use we just logged it with Facebook put our credit card information and they deliver it right to our hotel so quite useful but the one thing is when in order to the soup the pho that it didn't actually come with any bowls so luckily we just asked the hotel for some girls but definitely a useful app if you get tired of going out and you just want to get some food this is our fun tonight I thought in the foodie site and app very useful because it's used and rated by locals although you can't read the restaurant reviews and comments you can see the pictures for ordering TripAdvisor is useful when looking for Western foods but not as useful for Vietnamese food I personally found that cleaner restaurants with a nicer presentation tend to rank higher on TripAdvisor despite the taste of the food so now let's talk about shopping centers it's really crazy in the city there's just so much liveliness going on so if you're looking for a street marketplace and there's two markets here in Danang there's palm mochi which is behind me and there's our market that's just down the street and it's right by the river this is how con market looks inside it's a lot bigger than the Han market it's mostly fresh food in food stalls here but you can also find clothing cooking supplies and some other random stuff as well you can't really buy fresh food as souvenirs but it's quite a unique experience to witness all the local food so right before your eyes and take in that local market vibe oh and if you go inside there's even a spot where you can eat on the tables but I think the true experience is to squat down and eat right in the middle of the aisles in front of the food stall and this is Han Market the smaller of the two the first floor is mainly food and everyday goods the second floor is apparel goods if you're looking to purchase a reasonable out I dress this may be the spot one thing that you find about these local markets they always have an interesting smell how do I say this or not being rude it has its own unique and very characteristic market smell and if you look behind me there's just many knockoff products they have sure stresses they have shoes there's just all these different types of things in whatever you would want out of this kind of rate but I'm not sure about the quality because I've actually never bought any clothes for the market also sells fresh vegetables meat and lots of other food as well so but if you had a choice and you only had to like go to one and I would suggest going to car market because it's a lot bigger you feel a lot more local here but another a hundred get is close to the river and it's buy more of the turn spots so if you don't have a lot of time to make it to this one and you're ready over there then our market may be a better choice so if you're looking to do any big supermarket shopping then my recommendation is big see it has the widest selection and it has the cheapest prices that I've found it's inside the parks and mall but don't expect too much here I walked around to see what's here but I didn't see many international brands except gap at Nike and it kind of has this ghost town filled because not a lot of customers are walking the aisles on the second floor you can find a whole lot of food like the deli fresh vegetables and so on this is the perfect spot for me to get souvenirs like Vietnamese coffee and snacks to bring back home on the third floor you'll find household supplies it's very much like your standard Walmart or Target in the US so here they have your regular like poetry supplies shampoo conditioner body soap like all that kind of stuff just like a lot of stuff like I would say like this is probably the best place to buy like your daily needs stuff so above the supermarket there's even a movie theater right here and right next to it there's actually an arcade so if you're looking for some entertainment then this could be a spot just got to be careful because some of the movies are some of the games aren't very new but they do have conocchia machines right here as well as a bowling alley Bobo you're not gonna find like high brand fashion like shopping here than that but if you're actually looking for kind of like a nicer place to shop that I would recommend going to VidCon there's a lot nicer stores in general so VidCon is near Hunt Bridge it's a lot cleaner and newer than parks in you know find nicer shops with a better item selection I kind of prefer this shopping mall above all inside the mall there's even a small supermarket called Finnmark it's definitely smaller than Big C but it has just enough to pick up daily groceries and some decent souvenirs this behind me is big mark it has everything is kind of like your Vietnamese version of a Kmart or a Target and if you're looking for souvenirs it's pretty nice because they have a whole entire aisle dedicated to just souvenirs and there are a lot cheaper than going to the airport now if you're looking to do something just outside of Danang then I recommend visiting hyeyeon it's about a 40 to 50 minute car ride to this area and it's just literally breathtaking in fact the whole city itself is a world historic site so you'll see a lot of buildings that have been untouched and preserved just walking around it so you get a sense that here in Vietnam in fact I wish we would have spent a little more time here but unfortunately we were pressed for time so we're only able to spend a day but definitely I would recommend if you do have some time to maybe spend two to three days here and like really really take in the sights something worth mentioning for the historical sights in Hoi An City you need to purchase tickets like this it comes in a booklet of five tickets and those there are one ticket each time you enter a site I went to a few places like this Japanese bridge and Quang true also if you're looking for typical Vietnamese souvenirs like lanterns coloured shale bowls and wooden chopsticks I saw more of these type of souvenir shops with a wider selection in hyeyeon one of the things I recommend doing here when you get here is visiting a loon for action it's kind of like a circus Olay on bamboo which is really hard to explain so let me just show you all right so we're actually gonna go backstage and see this show which is kind of like just check out the we call them actors or performers yes when I got backstage they were practicing the new parts in the show apparently all the performers need to know each role the RO show is a blend of bamboo Cirque acrobatics contemporary dance with unique live music and I love how close the stages to the audience which makes the experience even more enriching and if you have your timing just right they have a lantern festival that runs once a month city itself turns off its lights and turns on all the lanterns throughout the city and it's just amazing to see and between a yin and Danang there's actually the marble mountains you might want to check that out as well here's some other things that I kind of wish I knew when I first came here but I didn't know what I found is that tipping is not a standard practice here in Vietnam going to restaurants or riding taxis you don't really have to worry about tips if you go to massages or even like nice restaurants the tips are actually already built in to the fee so so basically you don't have to worry about tips if that was one of your concerns all the time going to a country one of the things that I'm always worried about is not being connected because I'm always so connected in general like I want to be connected with people on Instagram or emails and whatnot what I found is that the hotels here um they have pretty decent Wi-Fi I was able to even upload a YouTube video from my hotel here in Vietnam so it's actually not that bad even some of the restaurants will provide Wi-Fi but if you're cruising around the city you won't have Wi-Fi so I would suggest getting a SIM card or a pocket Wi-Fi we would actually could be able to get a SIM card right when we landed at the airport at baggage claim there is about $8 you can probably get a cheaper if you look around it's kind of been instrumental for us because we use grab taxi the haptic like all taxis and just having the Internet connectivity on the phone at least one of our phones works really well make sure though your phone is unlocked I tried to use my phone it's a newly purchased iPhone and it wasn't unlocked yet so I wasn't able to get a SIM card for my phone but Michael had an older iPhone which we unlock and she was able to use it and speaking of taxis we haven't used a regular taxis here we've been using grab taxis it's a very similar service to Huber in Asia I'll leave a link in the description for you guys if you want it's been very very easy to get from location to location all of the locations and the restaurants we've gone to have been easily searchable on the app so everything is kind of like pre registered so it's been easy to find the locations it's easy to get picked up and it saves you that language barrier and the payment barriers language barrier meaning that a lot of enemies don't speak English I mean like literally they speak zero English so when you tell them like I'm asking for salt or water and so these don't know sometimes so good luck trying to tell them directions to a place if they don't speak any English grab taxi just pretty much but do it in the app and they'll just take you to that location and no problem also you don't have to like fumble around with the Vietnamese dong when you're paying them so it just makes it super super convenient to get around also one of our concerns when coming to a country is how we're gonna do laundry you can probably have some hotel to do your laundry for you but it gets quite expensive since we're staying by the beachside we found that the street behind us there's quite a bunch of laundry services and they're quite cheap there looks like one kilo or 2.

2 pounds is about 20 to 25 thousand dong about a dollar for a kilo of laundry which is really really cheap and finally if you're looking for massages then I found that on the same street as a laundry sheet behind the Beach hotels there's quite a lot of massage parlors or massage shops also a street after that this morning's parallel that also has a few massage shops and they're pretty good there are about 25, 000 to 30, 000 dong which works out to be around ten to fifteen dollars and this is for your like regular one hour body massage and they have other services that you can get one thing you need to be careful about the price is that sometimes the price that's listed doesn't include the tip and they actually add that on after you've had the service so what we found is that the tip is about another 50, 000 dong which is like 2 or 3 bucks but if you're looking for nicer massage places then it runs roughly between 400, 000 to 600, 000 dong and usually the tip is included in that fee also if you're looking for like really really nice massage places what we found is that the hotels provide some really nice like day spas but you will pay a premium for that price but that's pretty much the massage scene I was actually expecting to be a little cheaper than compared to Thailand but these are kind of the general prices in Danang and one last thing I wanted to talk about our drones or also known as fly cams here pretty much they're banned everywhere you're not supposed to fly drones at all if you really want to fly a drone then you're gonna want to get a license for it but I've heard some stories of people trying to get licenses for it and it's pretty much impossible so like don't even try to bring your drone here in fact if you try to bring your drone there's a high chance that I'll get confiscated at the airport I've read some stories where once you return back to the airport you'll be able to pick it up but pretty much like like all of Vietnam is like a no-fly zone so don't like waste your time trying to bring a drone that one more thing that I forgot visas if you're gonna stay less than 15 days there's several countries that you actually don't need a visa if you're staying less than 15 days but if you're saying more than 15 days then you're definitely gonna need to get a visa actually quite easy to apply online you just need to go to the government website I'll leave a link here be careful because there are services out there that will say that they do a visa service not to say that they won't actually process your visa but you need to know that they're not sponsored visas and the best place to go is the government one Michael actually had some trouble because she didn't get her visa on time and we were travelling during lunar holiday and everything is closed it takes a few days maybe up to a week to get your visa online that's probably the best way to go there are there is a visa on arrival process but then you need to get an invitation letter which you can apply online but save yourself some time in getting that invitation letter and then being at the customs and having to get your visa there oh and for you backpackers out there that are planning to go in and out of the country say you're traveling to Cambodia or Thailand and then back here then you'll probably want to get a multi entry visa you don't want to get the single entry visa where you won't be allowed back in alright so that wraps up the video if you liked it if you found it helpful then help me out and hit that like button oh and if you want to support the channel and check out my samurai merch link is always in the description again this video is kicking off our Vietnam series we'll be checking out some awesome street food we're gonna be checking out some luxury hotels I'll be releasing a video once a week for this series that's us carbon and the bail bond and I'll catch you guys in the next one.