The hand bridge or Golden Bridge in Vietnam is a very popular place for tourists since June 2018. After all, that’s when this stunningly beautiful Golden Bridge was opened in Da Nang, which is supported by 2 huge hands – the hands of God. It seems that this place has recently become the most popular place in Da Nang – the first thing everyone goes to see the Golden Bridge and then all the other attractions in Da Nang.
Basic information about the Arm Bridge – Golden Bridge in Vietnam
The Bridge of the Hand, as it is often called on the Internet, is located on Ba Na Mountain at an altitude of 1478 meters above sea level in the Ba Na Hills amusement park of the same name. To get and walk on the bridge you need to buy a ticket to this amusement park, as the Golden Bridge is one of its components. That is, you have to pay the full ticket price for the entire amusement park anyway even if you are only going to visit the Golden Bridge. That’s some interesting marketing.
The Golden Bridge was built and commissioned in less than 2 years at a cost of $2 million. This project combined both tourism and the need to connect the cable car station with the surrounding areas, as before the construction of the bridge the traffic between them was very difficult. The Golden Bridge is 150 meters long and has 8 spans. One gets the impression that the bridge is only held by hands, but this is not true – the bridge has several pillars.
The weather in the mountainous area of the bridge changes frequently, you can be here at first in sunny weather and after 15 minutes everything is already foggy. The most spectacular views and photos of the bridge is in the fog. The main director of the project, Boo Viet An said that the main idea was to design the bridge in such a way as to create the impression of the hands of God pulling a golden thread out of the ground and supporting it. The fingers of the hands were changed several times to get their optimal shape and positioning. The fingers are specially made with cracks and covered with moss in places – this makes it look like the Golden Bridge in Vietnam is many years old.
How to get to the Golden Bridge in Vietnam
The Golden Bridge and Ba Na Hills Amusement Park are 30 km from Da Nang. Thus, it can be reached in the following ways:
- On your own by car/moped. You can rent a vehicle directly from your hotel and enjoy the ride behind the wheel. The roads in Vietnam are excellent. We rented a moped from our super inexpensive hotel My Suites Danang-Beach for 150 thousand dong for 1 day. It took 45-50 minutes to get to the foot of Ba Na Mountain.
- By taxi
- As part of the tour, such as from Nha Trang. Visiting the Golden Bridge is one of the most popular excursions in Nha Trang.
Once you get to the entrance of Ba Na Hills Park, you need to buy a ticket. You can usually buy it on the official website, and we tried several times on the train from Ninh Binh to Da Nang. It didn’t work, for some reason it always failed at the stage of entering the payment card details. I do not know what it was, but we easily bought a ticket at the ticket office. The ticket price is VND 728,000 for an adult and VND 582,000 for a child. The ropeway operating hours are from 7 – 10 pm. You pay for the cable car, the first level of which is the Golden Bridge in Vietnam.
The cable car is a great attraction in itself, as the cabin takes you almost 1,500 meters above sea level, sometimes floating up into the clouds. The cabin offers great views of Ba Na Mountain..
Our visit to the Golden Bridge in Vietnam. Reviews.
The first thing I want to mention – I wanted to go to Da Nang just for the Golden Bridge, the distances in Vietnam are decent, it’s not your small island, so we decided to stop by and take a little look at another sea resort in Vietnam for the whole 2 days. So, bravo to the marketers! They did a great job spreading everywhere, especially on social media photos of the Golden Bridge, taken from good angles from the air. Moreover, there were very few people in these photos and, of course, I imagined the picture in my head, as I was walking alone on this bridge between the clouds! I think everyone who’s seen that kind of video has imagined it too. But this week it didn’t turn out that way at all. You can see my expectations in the picture below, and how it was in reality in the pictures at the end of the article.
So, after our 14 hour overnight journey by local train from Ninh Binh Province to Da Nang, we immediately checked into a cool and very cheap hotel My Suites Danang-Beach changed clothes, rented a moped from the hotel and around 11 pm started from the beach resort to the mountain side.The roads in Vietnam are great, so in about 45 minutes we drove 30 kilometers and parked our moped at the amusement park at the foot of the mountain. Next, we quickly bought tickets, loaded up the stall, and began to admire the beautiful views from the cable car stall that took us to the first level of the stop, the Golden Bridge. It took us about 20 minutes to ride the cable car, it was breathtaking, honestly! Especially in places where the funicular switches from one part to another and the cabin began to wiggle.
We got out of the cabin, the road took us to a round building, which was the exit to the Golden Bridge – Hand Bridge. In the room itself you can relax, there’s food, drinks, toilets, and massage chairs, just in case you’re tired of walking on the bridge.
When we went to the bridge my first surprise was the amount of people! It was just not crowded! Since the first arm is almost at the exit, many people immediately tried to take a nice picture at it, creating a bit of a traffic jam of people. We passed it as there were too many people. The first look into the clouds – very beautiful, beautiful views below.
The sky in a little haze, which then went away, then again as much as possible obscured the sky. Yes – amazing and admirable, well done, beautiful structure thought up the Vietnamese! I tried to catch this feeling that somewhere hovering in the clouds, but the number of people nearby kept me from doing so. We went to the second arm and there were fewer people, the sun came out and there was a picture.
So-so, right? I was expecting something better from the aerial view of the bridge. We went all the way around the bridge and it was only 150 meters long, but on the photos on the Internet it seemed to me that it was a circle around Ba Na. Such a deception of vision.
It turned out we came to the bridge at some peak of people, 30 minutes later we went back to the bridge and there were fewer people and the photos were more beautiful.
So I want to give you this advice – if you want there are not too many people it is best to arrive at sunset, by this time most people start to disperse and you can take beautiful photos of the Golden Bridge in Vietnam. If I had known that in advance – we would have definitely arrived by sunset!
At the exit of the bridge there is 1 other small park with similar figures out of the ground – a human head and an arm.
I didn’t really understand what they were made for, maybe it’s some sort of themed extension of the Golden Bridge. It took us about an hour to walk over the bridge – we walked over it 2 times, then on the same level we went for a walk to the Garden of Flowers and then took the funicular to 1 more level above, but about all this I will tell in detail in a separate article about the entertainment park Bana Hills. I know that some people come here only because of the Golden Bridge, not even walking around the park, in vain, I also really liked the park itself, but that’s another story.
Conclusion – is it worth going especially to Da Nang just for the Golden Bridge? Just to let you know – from Nha Trang you have to drive 10 hours by night bus, that is the distance is really big. I say so – after looking at photos on the Internet, I expected more, at least that the bridge will not be 150 meters around the whole mountain. But this and my shoestring, as it is better not to expect anything of the place, and you will like it much more. Considering that in Da Nang we have managed to see a lot of interesting things besides the Golden Bridge, it is worth a trip here.