I've been wandering further and further down the beach to have a look at this area that I have kind of dubbed a "dead zone of tourism" that exists between Da Nang and Hoi An, both of which are popular tourist places.
Throughout the years, and according to people who have lived here far longer than I have, well before that, there have been many attempts and popularizing the area in between and nobody has succeeded except for a golf course that I guess is reasonably successful. That would have been the case regardless though because people travel all over the place to golf and the course would pick them up at another hotel anyway.
The point being that the 20km or so between Hoi An and Da Nang just seems to fail no matter how much money they dump into it or what it is that they have on offer.
Today I stopped at an abandoned beach access parking lot and had a look inside.
When I say "abandoned" I guess I am being a bit dramatic. The area is still maintained to some degree as you can tell by the really nicely manicured area at the front. But you can tell by the size of this area that it was probably meant to accommodate a massive amount of people, perhaps even bus after bus of them. But I have never seen a substantial amount of people here and I have stopped by many times.
The resort next door might have something to do with why the property is still managed but even in summer there is almost never anyone here. The locals will come from the nearby village on motorbikes in the early evening because that is a popular time for locals to get in the water, but other than that any ideas of this becoming a popular beach access area have clearly failed.
This lack of people over the years has lead to the sides being covered in mostly terrible graffiti.
i find this pretty interesting though and feel like the overgrowth of the abandoned property on the other side of this wall to add a bit more to the looks of the street art, which isn't really all bad.
It appears as though some of this work may have actually been commissioned by the city and then regular street artists came along and added their own. It doesn't look terrible and nearby there is a community that seems to have embraced street art and perhaps wants it to be part of their neighborhood identity. I have written about that area quite a lot in the past so I won't bore you with writing about it again but I don't think that the people who put this stuff up over here were breaking the rules, they were likely allowed to do it.
Well manybe not all of it. This is on the security windows of what appears to be a snack bar of sorts but in the dozen or so times that I have been to this parking lot, I have never seen the snack bar be open.
Mixed in with the ocean-themed graffiti, there is also the usual tags, which I have never been a fan of and don't think they beautify anything that they are on. Even a good tag done well makes an area look ghetto IMO, so I am not a fan. I'm sure it takes some level of ability to do this sort of thing but to me I consider it to be the least talented of all street-art. Oh so you can make some big letters can you? You are so talented!
At the very end next to the beach there is a lifeguard shack with nobody in it but this may just be because of the storm we have right now. there was just a sign telling you to not swim but I think only a food would try seeing as how the waves are rough as hell right now and the water just looks scary and powerful. Even the surfers are nowhere to be seen.
I think that this area will probably be shut down soon due to disuse and that would be understandable. All the hotels that have tried to open up at this part, which is about 5km south of Da Nang, have failed and are just wasting away. I do still enjoy coming to look at them but I can't really see this area ever really taking off. There's just no reason for anyone to come down this way, unfortunately.