Hot sea and river tours

Tours for visitors excursing on Han River and Son Tra peninsula are crowded in the hot days, which makes many tourism companies not meet the visitors’ demands because of the shortage of transportation.

Meeting visitors busily 

After  4 tourism boats in the side of Han River’s east bank, the boat owner Nguyen Manh tidies and prepares water and fruit for the last passenger turn in the afternoon. He has to refuse many tours to Son Tra Peninsula because the machine is not strong enough to go to the sea. However, having known him for many years, many restaurants as well as hotels call him whenever there are tourists. Therefore, he is sometimes unable to serve the tourists who want to have an excursion on Han River or visit Cam Le, Tuy Loan and Hoa Nhon, etc. with his four boats (over 200 seats in total) on the weekend or in the festivals.

“Many visitors ask me for going to the sea but I daren’t. I would serve the tours with over 30 visitors per each one every day if I had stronger boats for the reasons that I prefer taking them to the sea and I would be paid much more”, Mr Manh said. He also said that the visitors usually asked for sea and river tours from Lunar New Year to the end of August except for storms and heavy rain.

According to Huy Khanh Tourism Company which specilises in serving marine entertainment tours and services, the number of visitors in sea tours is about 4000 people, not including the visitors who  take part in some sea sports such as water ski and water motorbike in the recent three months. Especially, “diving to watch coral” is the tour attracting the most number of visitors every day with the price from 250 to 280 VND per person.

Refusing to serve visitors in rush hours         

The Management Board of Son Tra peninsula and Danang tourism beaches generally reports that the number of visitors in the sea during the first 6 months is 5000 people which increases five times compared with the same period last year.

Besides the tours for Son Tra, visitors to Cu Lao Cham by sea increase accompanied by the increase of tourists to Danang and Hoi An in the summer, which shows the two local’s attraction to the domestic visitors, according to Mr Cao Tri Dung – the Deputy General Director of Vietnam Tourism Joint Stock Company ( Vitours). “We must refuse the visitors many times because the transportation and services are beyond our capabilities”, said Mr Dung.

The Director of Viet Da Tourism Company, Mr Dinh Van Loc, said that the company often advised the tourists to visit Son Tra Peninsula with cheaper service price but still attracting instead in cases there were too many tourists visiting Cu Lao Cham. To vary the tours, in Huc Lo area, bushes are cleared and some cottages are built to serve tourists excursing, having snack or diving to watch coral in Hon Sup, Bai Da or outside Mui Nghe, according to Mr Nguyen Ngoc Hiep, Director of Huy Khanh Company. Two canoes are also reinforced, increasing the number of canoes up to seven to enable to serve tourists in tourism season. Also, Huy Khanh Company has just introduced attracting fishing tour at night from 19:30 to 23:00 which takes place 4 or 5 times per week with 15 to 20 tourists per each tour.

The Board intends to form “up to the hill and down to the sea” tour to attract tourists with new feelings. Tourists will be able to go straight to the great old banyan tree from the road, then they can go along the stream to Huc Lo and go canoeing to the places with much coral.

Attractive Son Tra

From Danang City, looking at to the northeast, Son Tra peninsula appears in the white clouds in the sky. Tourists are interested in the forest discovering tour due to Son Tra’s majestic mountains, romantic combination of mountains and clouds and wild nature.

Thuan Phuoc Bridge across the Strait of Danang beach, where the river meets the sea, connects the active city life with peaceful Son Tra peninsula. The infinitely stretching green primeval forests combined with the turquoise water of East Sea are now in the city, which cools the busy and noisy life of a young city down. Son Tra Peninsula, as a princess awoken after a long sleep through centuries, is really magnificent. Come to Son Tra, tourists will admire its beautiful scene with high mountains having floating clouds, myrtle hills along the two paths and the lively overview of the city.

From the center of the city, it takes us 10 minutes to reach the peninsula by motorbike along the road running halfway up the mountain slope. The city noise is replaced with the peaceful space with cool breezes, bird songs and murmuring sounds of streams, all of which create a love song of the jungle. The higher the mountains are, the fresher and cooler the air is.

Our first stop is the 29 radar station of Vietnam Air Defence Air Force. The station, 621 meters above sea level, was built by The United States in 1965 and is considered Indochina god eyes. We believe that we have conquered Son Tra only when standing at the station in stead of seeing the little white balls on the top of the hill from the city. A beautiful city appears in front of us with ocean, Han River, streets and high buildings.

Then we leave for 621 sub-zone and have a walk to discover Son Tra old jungle. We enjoy a variety of colorful wild mushrooms and the mountainous crabs with strange colors creeping gently along the sand stream. The sand stream is a flow of yellow sand along the track and it doesn’t include any other impurities while the surround is soil, rock and dead leaves. Going to the inside of the jungle, there is the more abundant vegetation with purple flowers of the vines around the big rocks and many big tall trees lining continuously.

We continue to climb up to the higher tops of Son Tra. The curved road among the jungle leads to many hills in a continuous line. In the higher positions, the clouds are denser, which embrace the people. It is strange that the clouds come quickly but go quickly too. In few minutes, the sky is very clear. We go on a road with a lot of myrtle trees which are in their season of fruit. Monkeys, gophers and minks sit under the sun, which makes the scenery more lively.  After reaching the 650 meter high top of Chess Top, we start going down slope. There, we can see the immense ocean of which one side is Bac Beach (North Beach) with flat plain of yellow sand and the other side is Nam Beach (South Beach) with blue sea as a great steppe. The big road is the border of great ocean and high mountain, which connects the eastern slope and the western one to make Son Tra closer in the journey back to the nature

History of Danang city

In the middle of the 16th century, when Hoi An was a busy center of the south, Danang was only a small port for goods in transit and ship repair. It gradually developed into a commercial port replacing Hoi An in the early 18th century, when European shipbuilding was improved and large deep draught vessels could easily enter Danang Bay.

In 1835, after King Minh Mang ordered: “European vessels are not allowed to anchor to do trade at any harbours except for Han Port”, Danang became the largest commercial port in the central region. The local small-scale industries, including shipbuilding, preliminary processing of agricultural, forestry and fishery products, and trade, services prospered accordingly.
The French colonists, after establishing their domination of the whole of Vietnam in 1889, separated Danang from Quang Nam Province and renamed the city Tourane and under the control of the Governor General of Indochina.

In the early 20th century, Tourane was developed on a European model, which focused on social infrastructure and manufacture technology. Many kinds of economic activity took shape and thrived, such as agricultural production, small-scale industries, export product procesing (tea, food, beverages, ice, alcohol, fish sauce, dried fish), ship building and repair, and services. Together with Hai Phong and Sai Gon, Tourane became an important trading center of the country.

In 1950, French gave the authority over the city to the Bao Dai government. In March 1965, American marine units landed and started to set up a big military complex. The city was defined as a centrally governed city in 1967, and accordingly American troops and the Saigon government built up Danang into a political, military and cultural center of the 1st and 2nd tactical zones. Military bases and such infrastructure as the airport, ports, warehouses, roads, public works, communication stations, and banks were constructed. Industries flourished, resulting in the substitution by industrial zones of handicraft workshops. For example, Hoa Khanh Industrial Zone was used for oxygen, acetylene and detergent production, grind and textiles industries. However, the devastating war made thousands of rural people flee in refugee camps. Urban slums appeared, social evils increased and production came to a standstill. 

In 1975, after gaining complete independence, Danang (temporarily under Quang Nam – Da Nang Province) began to overcome the war’s severe consequences. Regardless of difficulties, the city’s rehabilitation and development had some results, especially after the renovation in 1986.

On 6 July 1996, the tenth session of the 9th National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam passed a Resolution separating Quang Nam – Danang Province into Quang Nam Province and Danang city, which was directly responsible to the central government. The new city of Danang consisted of the previous Danang, Hoa Vang Rural District and Hoang Sa Island District.