Dragon Breath
We did eventually go out about lunchtime and our first stop was a street stall for banh my. We washed it down with a cup of iced Jasmine tea, which was quite nice.
A relaxing stroll along the beach before a long walk through the town to KFC. We just had to get another 5000 Dong ice cream. It's essential! We also sampled food at another street stall near KFC but don't tell anyone as they will think we're greedy.
Oh, and we saw a cute temple and visited many tourists shops for Koreans. They were selling some items that we really wish they didn't - sharks fins for soup, millions of almost impossible to spot underwater seahorses. Just like the 5 we are are trying to protect at Studland! These surely must be farmed and then bagged up for sale or we will be facing seahorse extinction!
As the afternoon merged into evening it was time to head for the river to admire the views. At the river there is a cool suspension bridge that lights up. We took loads of photos - one each time the bridge changed colour. In fact all of the bridges in Da Nang light up. We crossed the river on a smaller pedestrian only bridge. There were many locals using it as a picnic spot away from the noise of the city.
We walked on and saw lots of tiny children playing on toy electric vehicles. There was a variety of different designs with sirens and lots of flashing lights. Some of these things went at Mach 5 and they were pretty close to taking out most of the pedestrians. We looked at a Thai restaurant but thought a price of 4x Thailand didn't match our budget.
Next, we came to the Vietnamese bars full of beer guzzlers, loud music and large TVs showing football. They also had pretty girls to lure in the wealthy tourists from Korea as this seems to be the biggest customer base in Da Nang. We could see some interesting lights in the distance and as we got closer we found a hall with a fancy roof hosting a photo exhibition of Da Nang. There were some great photos.
It was getting closer to the magic 9 o'clock so we needed to find a spot with a good view. At 9pm the dragon bridge breathes fire on a Saturday and a Sunday. We chose a spot as early as we could and waited. People were arriving from everywhere, motorbikes tucked themselves in carefully at the side of the bridge. Traffic was stopped from entering the bridge and 2 men crawled through a small door in the dragons head.
5 minutes later a huge burst of fire shot out from the dragons head! We weren't even that close but we could feel the heat and watched the smoke rise into the sky! It was quite exciting and there was plenty of screams from the crowd. The crowd screamed even louder when the flames turned to water. A monster sized water jet sprayed water everywhere. The wind blew the water away from us but those people who chose to stand at the other side of the bridge got absolutely soaked! They screamed, we chuckled!
When the excitement was over we headed to the night market where we ate dinner. We opted for the peanut flavoured dish we ate yesterday as it was so good! Our route home included one iced and one hot soya milk plus we avoided the backstreets where the big unfriendly dog lived!
