Entree Kibbles: The Golden Bridge (Cầu Vàng) Held by Two Gigantic Hands @ Bà Nà Hills in Da Nang [Vietnam]

Sunday, January 12, 2025

The Golden Bridge (Cầu Vàng) Held by Two Gigantic Hands @ Bà Nà Hills in Da Nang [Vietnam]

Mention Sun World Ba Na Hills and I guess many foreigners might not be aware that it's a popular hill resort theme park at Da Nang in Central Vietnam.

However, there's an attraction within the theme park that's world famous (at least on social media) and you can already spot it while sitting on the cable car system said to be record holder for the world's "longest non-stop single track cable car""!

Does this give you a better idea?! Yes, we shall be checking our the Golden Bridge, which was like the tourist icon of Central Vietnam! p.s. I don't know why, I have always thought it's called the Golden Hands!

Upon arrival at Marseille station, you can already explore the Golden Bridge but our pretty guide, Mee, persuaded us to go later as the bridge would usually be very packed in the morning as it's the first stop for the cable car. So, we went at around 2pm instead.

Start of the 150-meter long bridge, which was opened in 2018 and "designed by TA Landscape Architecture (under Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture)".

Nothing beats seeing the bridge with my own eyes! From a layman, I was marvelled by the image of a pair of gigantic hands, apparently cut off, and eventually calcified, holding on to a bridge that hundreds of mere humans stand on.

Like many visitors, we all wanted that picture perfect view of the golden bridge, with us in it! Squeezing in between the metal bars (they were steel, painted gold) was one quick option although there were two other photography spots which I would share shortly.

As we had limited time, I wasn't able to soak in the beauty of the bridge like this group of teenagers here. Hope I could do the same for my upcoming visit in May!

Despite its popularity, I was telling some of my friends that the image wasn't exactly kid-friendly. Like the hands were totally cut off at the wrists, like some kind of horrific dismembering by a serial killer.

Even though the material looked like stone, the hands were actually constructed using "fibreglass and wire mesh" and I am guessing with concrete smeared on them to look like stone hands.

My incomparable thumb.

Let's continue our journey; the bridge was very stable and you would be assured that it didn't swing / shake when we were there. To be fair, it wasn't very crowded.

I am looking forward to my two-night stay at Bà Nà Hills and hoping for good weather, so that I can get photographs with much lesser humans!

One path I didn't have time to check out was the one alongside the bridge but as it was a bottom-up view of the golden bridge; I figured the picture might not turn out as well, given my pathetic skill.

Just in case you thought there were just that two hands, surprises await at the end of the golden bridge. Here's the head, and wait, another hand?! Based on proportion, it didn't seem right that the two gigantic hands belong to the head.

There's even a leg!

Morbid, it sure was.

Oh well, didn't stop me from taking some fun shots with the smaller hand, re-enacting the scene of the "Creation of Adam". Use your imagination to decide who is god, and who is adam.

Remember the two photography spots I mentioned earlier? One of them would be at the end of the golden bridge, where a platform was installed to take that perfect shot of the the two hands behind you. As expected, the queue was long and we were about to miss the timing to meet up with our guide!

The time spent to hog the platform lengthened should any visitor decide to rummage through the dozen of flags to show their patriotism. Regardless of nationality, one photograph wasn't sufficient to record the moment.

Another photography spot could be found on your way back to the cable car station; which was pretty near the first spot. Only thing was that the picture taken here wasn't as great as from the first spot.

You get to be closer to both the hands but unless you have a super wide angle lens (not to mention the fish-ball effect that's not desirable for portrait photography), it may be quite hard to capture both hands in the same frame.