Ba Na Hills

The mountain rising here is Bà Nà, also called Núi Chúa. Its summit stands about 1,487 meters high. More than one hundred years ago, this place was completely wild. Then one day a French officer named Debay climbed up here. He was surveying the terrain of Annam, the name the French used for central Vietnam. He noticed something remarkable. Down below, Da Nang was sweltering. Up here, the air was 5 to 10 degrees Celsius cooler.

In 1919, the French authorities turned Bà Nà into a mountain retreat. It was like a small Da Lat, where the French living in Da Nang and Hue came up to escape the heat. Its heyday ran from 1930 to 1940. By then there were about 200 villas up here, along with swimming pools, tennis courts, a post office, a bank, a church and even a wine cellar. Then came long years of war. The villas were abandoned, and the forest covered everything. Today, old foundations and a few patches of ruins lie hidden among the trees, traces of a time long gone.

A cable car carries visitors up to the summit. The line is 5,771 meters long. When it first opened, it set several world records, according to Guinness World Records. The cabin glides over valleys of old-growth forest. The land below is the Bà Nà Núi Chúa Nature Reserve. This subtropical forest of the central Trường Sơn mountains stretches deep green all the way to the horizon.

The first sight at the top is the Golden Bridge, called Cầu Vàng in Vietnamese. The bridge opened on June 3, 2018. It is 150 meters long and 12.8 meters wide. It hangs in the open air, about 1,414 meters above sea level. It was designed by the Vietnamese architect Vũ Việt Anh, of TA Landscape Architecture. That same year, the American magazine TIME put it on a list of the 100 greatest places in the world.

Many people have already seen the photographs. Two giant hands, weathered with moss, hold up a gleaming golden walkway suspended between cloud and sky. To be clear, those hands are not natural stone. They are a steel frame wrapped in steel mesh, hand-shaped by craftsmen, then coated with a material that imitates mossy rock to make them look old. The tale of a mountain god lifting a golden silk ribbon is also just storytelling, added for a touch of magic. It is not an old legend. Even so, the Golden Bridge is beautiful enough to stir the heart. It remains a spectacular work of architecture, hanging halfway up the sky.

Bà Nà has one more curious feature. On about 60 percent of the days in a year, the summit is wrapped in fog. Here the fog is nothing to regret. It is the specialty of Bà Nà. If thick fog rolls in when you arrive and hides even the Golden Bridge, take your time and enjoy it. Walking through a drifting sea of cloud is a pleasure of its own, and not one that comes every day.

Next comes the Debay Wine Cellar, one of the few French relics to survive the war. It is named after the same captain who noticed the cool climate of Bà Nà long ago. The tunnel runs about 100 meters into the heart of the mountain. It is about 2 meters wide, and it was dug entirely by hand. Whether the sun is scorching or the cold is bitter outside, the cellar stays cool and steady all year round, at 16 to 20 degrees.

A little higher up is the French Village, which opened in 2013. It is a whole European town in miniature, recreating 19th-century French architecture with a square, a church, a castle and cafes. It is not a real French heritage site but a theme park. Still, it is built with such care that it feels like being lost somewhere in Europe.

Linh Ứng Pagoda of Bà Nà sits on the highest part of the mountaintop. It was inaugurated around 2004. Here stand the Linh Phong tower and a majestic statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, 27 meters tall. Shakyamuni was the founder of Buddhism. Many people assume the statue shows Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. It does not. It is the founding Buddha himself. Da Nang has no fewer than three pagodas named Linh Ứng. The first, Linh Ứng Bãi Bụt, stands at Sơn Trà. Its statue of Quan Âm rises 67 meters under the open sky. The second, at Ngũ Hành Sơn, stands on the peak called Thủy Sơn. And here at Bà Nà, the statue is Shakyamuni Buddha, 27 meters tall. Three pagodas, each with a character of its own, no two alike.

And then there is Fantasy Park, an indoor amusement park five stories high, with more than 100 games and rides. Small children and adults who love a thrill all find their own kind of fun there.

That is Bà Nà. On this one mountaintop, in a single day, there is time to walk through drifting white cloud on the Golden Bridge. There is time to wander through an old-world French village, then stand in silence before a Buddha statue under the open sky. Up here, the clouds come down close, and a cool wind brushes the shoulders. Far off on the horizon, the whole city of Da Nang looks tiny. Coming down the mountain, everyone carries home a Bà Nà of drifting cloud and cool air, one that is hard to forget.