Ba Na Hills Day Trip from Danang: Golden Bridge, Cable car, French Village, Buffet lunch, Fantasy Park. Max 9 pax, VIP Limousine car, no shopping (8:30AM-6PM)

Your guide and driver collect you from your hotel in Da Nang at around 08:30. With max 9 guests in the VIP limousine or 14 in the 16-seat car, there's room to stretch out and everyone hears the story. Ba Na Hills is just 45 minutes from Da Nang, but at 1,487 m the air is much cooler, and you can feel four seasons in a single day. The French discovered this mountaintop and began building a hill-station resort here in 1919. Today it's Sun World Ba Na Hills, a theme park with one of the longest and most beautiful cable cars in the world, the Golden Bridge held up by two giant hands, and hundreds of games and attractions for you to try.

Why you need a tour guide for your Ba Na day trip

Ba Na Hills is huge, spread over more than 850 hectares of mountaintop (about 1,200 football pitches), and it gets very busy, so the day doesn't run on a fixed schedule. Your guide plans the timing as you go and takes you to places like the Golden Bridge when the crowds are thinner, so you see them at their best.

There's no need to buy a Fast Lane ticket (Wow Pass) in advance. Once you're at the top, your guide tells you whether it's worth it that day, so you only pay for it if you really need it.

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Ba Na's cable car network is what turned an old hill station into a day trip. Its first line opened in 2009 and set two Guinness World Records. In March 2013 the Toc Tien–L'Indochine line went further, with four records at once: the longest non-stop single-track cable car, at about 5.8 km; the greatest height difference between stations, nearly 1,369 m; the longest continuous cable, 11,587 m; and the heaviest cable roll, 141.24 tonnes. The ride up takes around 20 minutes. Below you, jungle canopy and waterfalls run down the slopes; then the cabin slides into the cloud and out above it. The air cools as you climb, and on a clear morning Da Nang and the sea sit behind you on the horizon.

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The Golden Bridge opened in June 2018 and drew international press within weeks. It's a 150-metre gold-railed walkway, about 5 m wide, curving out over the forest more than 1,400 m above sea level, carried on two giant hands. They look like ancient, moss-covered stone, but they are fibreglass over wire mesh, designed by TA Landscape Architecture of Ho Chi Minh City so visitors could walk from the cable car station to the gardens without a steep climb. From the bridge you step down into Le Jardin d'Amour, nine themed flower gardens of paths, arches and terraces.

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The villas of the French era are long gone, but the French Village recreates the idea on a grander scale: a cobbled main street, a market square, a Gothic-style church, a hotel and cafés, all built in recent years. Nothing here is a century old, and your guide will tell you plainly which stories are history and which are set design. It's still one of the best places on the mountain to wander: the square, the church steps and the lanes behind them.

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Lunch is a buffet, already included in your ticket, and you choose the restaurant. Ba Na has five buffet restaurants. Four Seasons, Taiga and Bharata are open all year; Beer Plaza and Arapang open only in summer. All serve 10:30 to 15:00 at the same price, so pick by taste. Tell us your choice when you book, or decide with your guide on the way up. Each one is a large, busy dining room rather than a quiet local table, so we keep it simple: your guide walks you in, sorts out seating and tells you exactly when and where the group meets for the afternoon. Then eat at your own pace. After a morning of walking, most guests are glad of the break.

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The afternoon is yours, about three hours on the summit. Here's where our guests usually go. Before you split up, your guide gives you a clear meeting time and place, and their phone number.

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At 16:45 the group rides the cable car down together, dropping out of the cool mountain air and into the warmth of the plains. Your driver is waiting at the base station, and the car heads straight back to the city. There's no showroom and no souvenir “rest stop” on the way, nothing between the mountain and your hotel except the road. You're back in Da Nang at around 18:00, in time for dinner. Use the drive to ask your guide where they eat near your hotel.

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