Ba Na Hills and the Golden Bridge — the Mountain That Was a French Town

Ba Na sits in Hoà Vang district, about 25km west of central Da Nang. The summit is close to 1,500m, so the temperature up there usually runs 10–15 °C cooler than the city.

Let us be straight about it from the start: Ba Na Hills today is a theme park, not untouched nature. Go knowing that and you will enjoy it. Expect an empty mountain and you will be let down.

This mountain used to be a French town

In April 1901, Captain Victor Adrien Debay led an expedition under orders from Paul Doumer, Governor-General of Indochina, and found this mountain — the locals called it Núi Chúa. The climate was cool, the summit relatively flat, and it lay only a few dozen kilometres from Da Nang.

After the First World War the French built a road up (finished in 1919) and then built hard. By the late 1930s the summit held more than 200 villas, hotels, a hospital and a wine cellar — which still stands and is still open to visitors. In summer the population up there ran into the thousands.

Then the French left in 1945. The war dragged on and nobody went up the mountain. Forest grew over the foundations. For half a century Ba Na all but vanished from the tourist map.

When Sun Group invested and the first cable car ran in 2009, what they revived was not virgin forest — it was a hill station that had already existed a hundred years earlier.

The cable car is the only way up

The old road is no longer used by visitors. To reach Ba Na you take the cable car, and the ride itself is one of the better parts of the day.

The Ba Na cable car system holds four Guinness World Records, and its longest line measures 5,771.61m. The cabin takes about 15–20 minutes, crossing a valley, a waterfall and old-growth forest.

The cable car is the one moment in the day when you see Ba Na as an actual mountain — dense forest, steep slopes, nothing built. Sit by the glass and keep your head out of your phone for this bit.

The Golden Bridge: two hands that are not old at all

The most common misconception about the Golden Bridge is that those stone hands are centuries old, or some kind of monument.

They are not. The bridge opened in June 2018, designed by TA Landscape Architecture with Vũ Việt Anh as lead architect. It runs about 150m long at an altitude of roughly 1,414m.

The hands were built as a frame and then rendered in mortar, with the surface deliberately aged to look like weathered stone — the moss, the cracks and the staining are all design decisions. The deck is clad in gold-painted steel with titanium-gilded stainless railings, so it catches the light hard.

In August 2018, TIME magazine put the Golden Bridge on its list of the World’s Greatest Places. The photographs went everywhere after that and Ba Na’s visitor numbers changed completely.

Knowing it is new does not make the bridge less striking. Just do not tell your travelling companions it is ancient.

The French Village and Fantasy Park

The summit holds a cluster of buildings imitating a European town: a square, a church, castles, a hotel. This is newly built, not what remains of the old French resort.

That is not a criticism. It photographs well, children like it, and when the mist comes down and the castles float above the cloud it genuinely looks like nowhere else.

Next to it is Fantasy Park, an indoor games area mostly covered by your ticket. On a rainy or heavily fogged day it is somewhere to shelter, and that is a perfectly good reason for it to exist.

The weather decides your whole day

At nearly 1,500m, cloud and mist at Ba Na are routine, not a malfunction. There are days when visitors reach the top and see nothing but white — the Golden Bridge twenty metres away is not visible.

Four things worth remembering:

• Go up early. The first cable car of the day is both emptier and more likely to be clear. Cloud builds through the middle of the day.
• Fog does not necessarily ruin the trip. If you are standing above the cloud rather than inside it, you get a sea of cloud, which beats a clear sky.
• Bring a light jacket even in midsummer. When it is 35 °C in the city it can be 20 °C on the summit, with wind on top.
• Avoid weekends and public holidays if you have the choice.

How crowded does it get

The empty Golden Bridge photographs you see online were nearly all taken at first light or by drone. At peak hour the deck is packed, and getting a frame without strangers in it means waiting.

There is no clever trick here. Only one thing actually works: take the first cable car of the day and go straight to the Golden Bridge before doing anything else.

Tickets and how to buy them

The Sun World Ba Na Hills ticket is an all-inclusive ticket — it covers the return cable car, the French Village, the Golden Bridge and most of the rides in Fantasy Park.

Three things to remember:

1. Bring ID if you are a Da Nang resident — the local rate is considerably cheaper and it is checked.
2. Buy online at least a day ahead, and further ahead around public holidays.
3. From 1 January 2026, Sun World allows one ticket to be used multiple times within three days. If you are in Da Nang for a while and your first day is fogged in, you can come back the next.

Ticket prices change with the season and with promotions. The figures above are a reference — check the official ticket page before you go.

Is Ba Na Hills worth it?

The honest answer: it depends what you want.

Worth it if you are travelling with children or older relatives, want an easy day with no climbing, like taking photographs, or simply want to see for yourself the bridge that made the TIME list.

Think twice if you are after unspoilt nature and dislike crowds. For that, the Sơn Trà peninsula suits far better and costs a fraction as much.

A day at Ba Na takes the whole day, so if you only have three days in Da Nang, weigh it carefully.

If you would rather not organise it yourself

There is a Ba Na Hills day tour with hotel pickup, the return cable car and an optional summit buffet, and Ba Na also appears as a day-two option on the two-day Da Nang itinerary and as a full day on the three-day one.