VIETNAM’S GOLDEN BRIDGE GOES VIRAL
New attraction draws hordes of visitors since opening in June
NESTLED in the forested hills of central Vietnam, two giant concrete hands emerge from the trees, holding up a glimmering golden bridge crowded with gleeful visitors taking selfies at the country’s latest eccentric tourist draw.
Designed to make visitors feel like they’re taking a stroll on a shimmering thread stretching across the hands of gods, the “Golden Bridge” has attracted hordes of guests since it opened in the Ba Na Hills near here in June.
Images of the bridge had gone viral on social media, much to the surprise of the architect who had no idea it would attract so much attention.
“We’re proud that our product has been shared by people all over the world,” principal designer and founder of TA Landscape Architecture, Vu Viet Anh, said.
At 150m long, the bridge snakes through the forest high up in mountains first developed by French colonists as a hill station in 1919.
Today, the area is a major tourist attraction, boasting a cable car, replica French medieval village — including faux castle and cathedral — manicured gardens and a wax museum featuring statues of Lady Gaga and Michael Jordan.
The only remnants of the original French occupants are the crumbling remains of their holiday homes that can still be spotted from the cable car.
But visitors are mostly interested in the newly built Cau Vang, which means “Golden Bridge” in Vietnamese.
“The bridge is beautiful with an amazing architectural style, from here we can see Da Nang City, it’s so nice,” Nguyen Trung Phuc said.
Another visitor, Nguyen Hien Trang, said: “I have travelled quite a lot, but I’ve never seen any bridge as beautiful as this one.”
The Ba Na Hills project was built by Sun Group, which has divided opinion with audacious projects elsewhere in Vietnam.
In 2016, it opened a cable car on Vietnam’s tallest mountain Fansipan in the tourist hotpot Sapa, prompting complaints from locals who felt it spoiled the landscape and took business away from trekking guides.
Vietnam is no stranger to offthe-wall attractions.
A “crystal cloud” installation of 58,000 shimmering Swarovski beads in the rice-terraced hills of northern Vietnam opened earlier this year, while the surreal “Crazy House” hotel in central Da Lat, designed to look a trippy treehouse, has long attracted legions of curious visitors.
Golden Bridge designer Anh said he already had another project in the works: a silver bridge made to look like a god’s strand of hair that will connect to his existing structure in the Ba Na Hills.