Immediately after passing through customs at Da Nang International, we went outside to figure out the phone situation. We knew we needed to leave our phone in airplane mode to avoid any roaming charges, and we needed to get e-sims for the duration of the trip. While Ken tracked those down, I immediately went off in search of coffee. Because Vietnam. And they weren’t lying when they told me Vietnam has some of the best coffee in the world. My first ca phe sua da!!! (Iced milk coffee) And it was heavenly!
As soon as we got the phone situation handled, we called for a Grab (for those who don’t know, this is like Uber or a taxi service) to get us to the Airbnb. We caught a ride with a nice man named Nguyen, who asked how long we would be in town and if we would like any other rides later that day. We knew that we wanted to stay close to the Airbnb that first day, since it was already around 2pm, so we declined any additional rides that same day, but arranged for Nguyen to pick us up the following morning to go to the pre-scheduled tour of the International School we had been eyeballing for Skipper. Good thing, too, since I had screwed up on calling for the ride. With Uber, the only payment option is credit card, so I had no clue that I needed to deselect “cash” as the default and reselect my credit card. And we didn’t have cash yet, so we couldn’t pay him. But Nguyen was very good-natured about it and said we could just pay him for it the following morning when he picked us up for the tour. PHEW!!! Crisis averted!
Our Airbnb host had contacted us a little earlier to find out when we would be arriving at the unit so she could come outside to greet us. She was waiting when we got there and was so very kind. She helped us get our bags upstairs, showed us where to go (inside the building, past the smoothie shop that operates on the first floor), and made sure we knew where everything was and that we had everything we needed. We had only been on the ground for maybe two hours and already felt a very warm welcome from everyone we had met. It was already hard not to fall in love with this beautiful country! (If you’re interested in the Airbnb we stayed in, you can find it here)
Reality hit pretty quickly though – we had no cash and no way to pay for anything. So we looked up the nearest Timo Hangout (where you can get a Vietnamese bank account for easier ability to make payments). Turns out, the two standard payment options are cash and QR code. And the only way to pay be QR is with a local bank account. Well, we way overshot it and showed up about 10 minutes before closing, so they couldn’t do anything to help us until the next day. Huge bummer, but we found an ATM where we were able to pull cash, and got to see our first glimpse of the Dragon Bridge! And there was a McDonald’s that had… pasta?? With seafood on it? And what looked like fried chicken with a wasabi drizzle? What WAS this madness???
And how crazy is scooter traffic in Da Nang??? There were like hundreds of scooters all going every which way, with seemingly no order to it at all. But somehow, they managed the chaos without hitting anything. I know I’ll have a very hard time riding anything on two wheels over here – I could barely ride in a car someone else was driving without covering my eyes – and I ride actual motorcycles in the states!
After Timo/exploring a little near Timo, we headed back to An Thuong (the neighborhood our Airbnb was in) to explore and found so many food vendors and interesting shops! We scored our first in-country meal – Banh Mi!! Three of them (one for each of us) for about $2 USD. That’s so crazy – we can barely get a single item off a drive-thru value menu for $2 back home. And these were some of the best Banh Mi we ever had! DROOL!!!!!!
Side note – have you ever tried to cross a street in Da Nang??? It’s absolutely terrifying. Apparently the rule is once you step off the curb: don’t stop, don’t switch directions, don’t switch speeds. Everyone else is gauging how fast and where to go based on your speed while you walk, so if you do anything unexpected, you are asking for trouble. And crosswalks?? HA!! Just a suggestion!
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