Sun World and B'estival

Ba Na Hills is also home to Sun World, an amusement park with tons of games and attractions. After the visitors had left for the day, the park was ours to explore! In the evening, Sun World was open only to hotel guests.

We rode a short 3D video ride, then played a "4D" game in which we rode horses and shot at bad guys like cowboys. It was pretty fun! Most of the rides in the Sun World park are really crowded during the day, so it was a blast to explore when we didn't even need to wait in any lines.

First thing the next morning, we headed out to look at the "Alpine Coaster", a luge-type ride that runs on a track through some scenic mountainside, then back to the mountaintop via a track. The ride takes about five minutes. The wait during the day is hours long, but we got there as soon as they opened!

Before we left the mountaintop to head back down into Da Nang, there was one thing left to do: visit "B'estival". As we were getting in the cable car to go up the mountain, the hotel concierge passed me a handful of tickets. "Free beer", he told me. Well, who could pass that up?

B'estival, it turns out, is something like Ba Na Hill's Oktoberfest, a summertime "Beer Festival" taking place in a big beer hall on top of the mountain. They aren't stingy at all about the beer, handing plenty of free beer tickets out to hotel guests every day.

Vietnamese beer is not bad. It's not quite as good as Beer Lao, but there are many more varieties. Each city in Vietnam seems to have its own special beer (even if they are all fairly similar - light lagers). These were German beers, though! We got a trio of mugs of "dunkelbier" with our tickets.

The beer hall even employed real Germans to go around toasting, chatting, and drinking with the guests.

Before heading back down from Ba Na Hills into the summer heat of Da Nang, we shared a few more beers on a chilly, misty balcony looking out over the mountainside.

But soon, it was time to go down. We checked out in the early afternoon. A concierge had already delivered all of our luggage back down to front desk at the foot of the mountain, and the car we had hired would be there soon.

It was time to go back to the cable car. This time we were super lucky, though! This particular car was one of the very special ones with a glass bottom!

We had amazing views of the mountainside as we slowly swung along on our journey down the mountain.

Although our time up on Ba Na Hills was at an end, our vacation wasn't quite over! At the base of  the mountain, a hired car was waiting to take us on the 40-minute drive back through Da Nang and on to Hoi An, the UNESCO World Heritage City where we would be spending the next few days.