Our first full day in Vietnam we were craving some actual breakfast food so I found a restaurant called Bikini Bottom Express. We had been doing coffee and a pastry most mornings since it’s hard to find a true breakfast place in Asia (especially with food that were used to and not rice or noodles). The food there was really good and filling!

Since Grant had previously traveled to Vietnam, he knew the massages here were very cheap. We found one that had good reviews and headed that way to get a much needed massage after all this traveling. The massage was very relaxing and only cost us $16 each! I wish those were the prices in the US. I’m a frequent Massage Envy traveler and a massage there is usually $70! And they gave us some tea and crackers to enjoy afterwards.

To continue our relaxing day, we headed to our beachside bar where we ended up meeting the owner. He was originally from Turkmenistan and had lived in Moscow for a few years for university and working in nuclear aviation propulsion (or something like that). He had moved to Vietnam 4 years ago and started doing architect design work where he came up with the idea for the bar. When he found out Grant majored in aerospace engineering, he was so excited to talk engineering with someone. They ended up chatting for about 15-20 minutes, mostly about Starlink. As we were leaving, we asked how hard it was to drive a motorbike in Vietnam and he told us it wasn’t too bad so we went ahead and booked our bike.

The rest of the afternoon we enjoyed a quick break back at the Airbnb and ended up creeping on a wedding going on at the hotel below our room. With Grants zoom, we got a couple pics of the bride and groom singing to each other. Although we couldn’t understand anything they were saying, it was really good! We then took a quick swim in the water since we were finally back in warm weather. The water wasn’t too cold but the waves were really choppy. And I continued the saga of losing my sunglasses. I was already on my third pair by that point in my trip, which I lost when I got hit by a wave!

We had learned in our research of Da Nang that they do a show at the dragon bridge every Saturday and Sunday night at 9 PM so we decided to watch it by the bridge that night. It was about a 30-40 minute walk from our Airbnb to the bridge so we grabbed dinner about halfway. The hard thing about the food throughout our week in Vietnam was a lot of their “seafood” included a mix of fish and shellfish so I had to be careful with what I ate to not have a reaction to shellfish. Grant ended up trying the beef vermicelli with udon noodles while I stuck with the bibimbap knowing it did not include any seafood.

On our way to the bridge, we were to cross one of the busiest intersections in the city. We figured we would try to walk down the side street a little more to make it easier. But instead it just made it worse as we chose to cross in a section with construction on the street while motorbikes, cars, and big trucks are barreling at us. Thankfully we were able to safely cross and head onto the Dragon bridge. We didn’t realize how big a spectacle this was when we arrived. It was like the crowds you see in America on the 4th of July waiting to watch the fireworks shows. The city closes the bridge down to traffic for about 10 minutes while the dragon emits flames from its mouth off and on before ending with a shower of water.

After the show ended, we found ourselves exploring the night market where we tried Kem Kep. This is basically a literal ice cream sandwich containing a block of ice cream wrapped in a slice of bread. It actually was pretty delicious. As things are relatively cheap in the market, we grabbed a knock off Nike shirt for Grant, a two-piece set for me to wear at temples to cover legs and shoulders along with some knock off Ray Bans (which literally only lasted about 24hours before a lens popped out) – so much for sunglasses pair #4! For reference, my two-piece was priced at about $6.40USD and Grant’s shirt about $4USD. Even though you are told you should negotiate at the night markets we didn’t really because we felt weird trying to knock 50 cents off an already cheap item. The guy selling Grant the Nike shirt suggested he buy an XL but Grant went with his normal L and it was too tight when he tried it on back at the apartment! Should have listened!

We headed back to the room to plan out our next few days and decide whether or not we wanted to spend a night outside of Da Nang.