You know the old adage of "don't fix it if it isn't broken."? Well that is exactly the sort of advisor that they need to hire for whoever keeps fiddling with the tourism market here in Da Nang. This is one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Vietnam and I wish I could say that is because this area is remarkably beautiful in unique. It's just ok. The beach is nothing to get excited about and there is so much other commerce here such as it being a major industrial area as well as a busy international seaport for both good and military that it is basically assured that there are always going to be a ton of people here.
The reason why tourism is so widespread here is likely because it is one of the only international airports in the country that actually has any traffic from overseas. There are plenty of other more beautiful places than Da Nang, this city just happens to be the most accessible and Koreans and Japanese primarily, who don't have a ton of time to be screwing around with transport and only have a short holiday, are going to go the close and cheap place rather than a much nicer place that is more difficult to get to.
Despite the fact that the supply cannot keep up with the demand as far as tourism is concerned here, they (presumably the government ) is always niggling with what exits here and adjusting it in completely unnecessary ways. One of the ones that I was most affected by was the now failed "walking street" area that didn't even last a full two years before they pulled the plug.
Here is one of the walking streets in question. I didn't have the idea to take a photo when it was operating but as you can tell that is just a regular street. They marked off the road at both ends, which annoyed car drivers since this was a major road, and then I guess they left it up to the people as to what they were going to feature there and guess what? They all opened exactly the same stores for hundreds of meters all the way down the road! Those people you see in the picture are all venders and they are constantly pestering anyone who would dare walk down this "walking street" to get a massage or get some overpriced BBQ seafood. It got to the point where I would intentionally avoid this road anytime I walked anywhere because it was just one after the next after the next all offering you the same crap that nobody wants.
Then in an area further south from here they also blocked off the streets from car traffic and had stages set up every now and then for really loud music. The problem with this setup was that there are a ton of businesses and hotels that are on these streets and people that live or are staying there didn't take very kindly to being told that they are not allowed to drive their car to their own house or business. So certain exceptions were made, then more exceptions, then it became apparent that the people, especially the tourists that are staying at the scores of hotels on these streets don't actually want super loud music playing outside their windows.
It is important to keep in mind that there was absolutely nothing else offered on these walking streets other than the occasional stage blocking the entire road and I guess the idea was to direct more foot traffic to the local businesses? The major problem here is something that a child could figure out: How the hell are these businesses meant to get their supplies for their stores if no delivery trucks are allowed?
So eventually I guess someone sensible came along and said "tear all this crap down."
This is now what remains of the decorative bicycles that they had as both a photo opportunity and a warning to all cars that they are not allowed to drive down the roads. They just throw them on the side of the road and I presume that is where they will remain until someone comes along and steals them for scrap.
I do not speak Vietnamese but I presuming that the Vietnamese on that sign means "walking street."
Ok, this next one clears it up. That has to be what it means
No cars and extremely limited amounts of motorbikes were allowed on these streets from 6-11 pm which seems reasonable if you are running a government building and this is probably where they go this "brilliant" idea. Non government businesses do not operate on banking hours though believe it or not, and they would have customers arriving or goods arriving well into these prohibited hours. A friend of mine worked a rather large hotel and they would have full-size busses pull up filled with tired people that want to check into their rooms and they were told that they had to walk the rest of the way with their bags. Obviously this created a lot of problems. Vendors trying to deliver beer or whatever else would routinely get into shouting arguments with the gatekeepers at the ends of the streets and for a while there one of my and my friends' favorite things to do was to go to one of the bars at the corner of these streets to see how heated it would get. The private security had to be replaced by police and military because apparently some of these beer vendors got so annoyed they started driving through the barricades.
So here we are, less than 2 years later and this wildly stupid project has finally been called off. I hope in the future they can be a bit more sensible with their ideas because it didn't boost tourism, everyone that had businesses in these areas hated it even though it was meant to give them more customers. It had the opposite affect actually. Because of the annoying nature of the temporary shops that were set up on the streets by people all offering the same services word started to spread online and tourists were intentionally avoiding this part of town.
Although I don't have any official word on this I think this is probably why it was abruptly shut down after the only full "high season" that it was in place. I am sure that nobody in the government wants to accept responsibility for this huge failure either.
I hope in the future if they really want to boost tourism they can look at things that have a much greater impact on decisions to stay here or come here in the first place such as visa access being easy, visa duration being longer, and maybe just throw in a little bit of environmental responsibility in there just for fun. We could start by not just discarding the remnants of the failed walking street on the side of the road.