Vietnam’s Middle Ground: Discovering Da Nang, Hoi An, and Everything Between

Ask the backpacker clutching a tattered Lonely Planet from the ’90s, or the influencer piloting a drone over rice paddies—they’ll both say they’ve “done Vietnam.” What they mean is they’ve braved Hanoi’s honking, hyperactive chaos or drowned in Saigon’s neon and motorcycle fumes. The middle? That blank space on their itinerary, the part between the clichés. Which, to me, is exactly the point.

I boarded the inaugural Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Da Nang, an event marked by a corporate ceremony—a few embassy speeches, a branded tote bag meant to symbolize the friendship between nations. The plane touched down in Da Nang’s immaculate glass-and-steel terminal: a proud, polished monument to progress that could have been anywhere. These new airports are built to erase difference, to flatten mystery into reassurance.

But the real Vietnam asserts itself the moment you walk outside. Humid air hits you like a wet slap. The smell of charcoal smoke, river mud, ripe fruit, and motorbike exhaust. Da Nang offers the illusion of order—wide, surprisingly clean streets, manageable traffic, and ride-hailing apps that work. It isn’t Hanoi with its aggressive cacophony, nor Saigon with its hustler’s glint. It’s patient. Reserved. You get the sense it doesn’t care if you like it or not.

My hotel in Son Tra District was unremarkable: a soft mattress, a king-sized bed, a half-interested clerk, walls painted in hopeful but peeling white. But the sea was right there, a long curve of pale sand lined with resorts whose owners spoke of “development” with a missionary fervor. Walk a few blocks inland, and you lose the curated beach vibe. Narrow lanes opened onto small markets where old women haggled over vegetables and chickens pecked at litter in the dust.

I met Brad there, an American I’d once shared a tour with in Puerto Princesa. The sort of accidental friendship that makes no sense except that it does. We wandered together through Son Tra Night Market, neon lights throwing garish color over the slick pavement, smoke rising from grills in urgent, greasy plumes. This was not a place for authenticity fetishists, only for commerce in its most primal form: the endless friction of bargaining and selling.

We devoured Banh Xeo Ba Duong—those glorious turmeric-yellow crepes cracking with fried edges, stuffed with shrimp and herbs, wrapped in rice paper, and plunged into a fish sauce that smelled like the bottom of the sea. It was both delicate and greasy, balanced and overwhelming. I ate three, of course. Grilled octopus followed, charred and succulent, offered with all the ceremony of a paper plate. Around us, plastic stools scraped concrete, vendors barked prices, and durian stank from half-split husks.

The next day, we took the bus to Hoi An. An hour of confusion and motion through green fields and shacks leaning drunkenly on each other. Few spoke English, which I appreciated. Travel should be uncomfortable. It should force you to admit you don’t know everything.

Hoi An was the Vietnam of postcards—ochre walls, gently sagging roofs, riverside lanterns strung like festival bunting for tourists’ cameras. It was undeniably beautiful, even in its self-awareness. Commerce here had learned the art of the performance: tailors beckoning with too-good-to-be-true suits, café owners selling bitter coffee as heritage, souvenir hawkers repeating prices in perfect English. And yet there was life beneath the choreography. Altars flickering with incense. Old men napping in wooden boats. The humid air pressed close, heavy with river damp and possibility.

We returned to Da Nang before dark, drawn back to the night market’s relentless energy. More Banh Xeo. More cheap beer that was never quite cold enough. And then the monsoon hit in thick, angry sheets of water that turned the market into a frantic scramble of umbrellas and tarp roofs. We huddled beneath corrugated metal with locals and tourists alike, no one rushing off, no one complaining. Just waiting out the storm together.

I had only two days. Not nearly enough. But travel isn’t about conquering a place or collecting it like some exotic stamp in a passport. It’s about surrender—letting yourself be claimed, however briefly, by somewhere that resists your understanding. You stand in a humid market under slanting neon, watching smoke rise from woks, breathing in the sharp scent of fish sauce and the pungency of durian, aware that you’re a trespasser in someone else’s daily struggle. You share a plastic stool with an old friend, laughing at private jokes while the monsoon churns the street into a river, and realize that here, you are both connected and apart. This is what travel offers in its finest, most unsettling form: not comfort, not certainty, but the vertigo of knowing how small your life is, how partial your vision will always be. And you leave not satisfied, but grateful—for the mystery that lingers, for the invitation to return, for the knowledge that the world is vast enough to remain beautifully, permanently beyond you.