The journey to conquer Ghenh Bang - The wild beauty is preserved in Son Tra Peninsula

Hello everyone! How is everyone today? Another day has passed and a new day brings new hopes, keep smiling my friend. In my previous posts, I had articles about the famous tourist attractions of the city I live in. I am very happy to be able to share my travels through the Hive blogging platform. I am very happy to receive and give many compliments to my articles. Those are the motivations that have helped me develop myself more. This year I am only 19 years old, a university student. This year is also my first year at university. I studied at FPT University, majoring in software engineering. The cost of studying at this school is quite high, compared to other universities in the same city. While going to school, I just got a part-time job by taking pictures, so that I could partially support my family. I am so lucky to have an uncle who is also a photographer. He has given me a lot of support, along with the valuable experience that he has had over the years in his profession. His instructions gave me good directions when starting with photography. After using the Hive platform, seeing everyone's useful sharing, helps me to expand my knowledge more. I am amazed by the articles, about travel and articles about photography. After reading those articles, I had another thought, why don't I write about the famous tourist attractions of my city, so that people can feel the beauty here. Over the past 2 years when the world was affected by the Covid pandemic. The world is divided, all countries cannot trade normally. The travel restrictions of each country, have caused the world tourism economy, to achieve negative growth. But I hope the next time, the situation will be better. My country is also starting to open up to tourists, in tourist cities of Vietnam. After more than 2 years of closure, Da Nang also has new changes. My travel articles, my English writing is not good, there are many limitations and I am improving my English language, to have better articles shortly.

Today's article of mine will continue to write about a tourist destination of Son Tra peninsula. I have written travel articles about the Son Tra peninsula before, if people want to review it, I will leave the bottom of today's article. Son Tra is one of the places everyone must visit when coming to Da Nang city. If someone tells me that the Son Tra peninsula only goes away in 1 day, all the places here are gone, then that is wrong. Son Tra in addition to famous tourist destinations, there are many unspoiled places. One of those places, there is a very beautiful place that I want to introduce in today's article. That is Ghenh Bang rock beach. This trip was on Thursday this week, I had an incident during the trip that day and in my today's post, I will introduce everyone to this place.

Ghenh Bang is one of the wild places, loved by many backpackers and visited every summer. Ghenh Bang is located under the sea, at the foot of Son Tra mountain. This place is about 16km from the center of Da Nang city, to the east of the city. On today's trip, there is another close friend of mine. His name is Trung, we have been playing together since I was in 6th grade. This was our first outing in Ghenh Bang. After my friend came over to pick me up at 13:00, we started moving to Ghenh Bang. To get to Ghenh Bang, we had to cross the river near my house. That is the Han River and the bridge that we crossed, also called the Han River Bridge. This is one of the first built bridges of the city, in the early development of Da Nang. The Han River Bridge has started construction in 1998 and was inaugurated in 2000. The outstanding feature of this fishing rod is that in the center of the bridge, it can rotate the shaft, helping large boats to go inside the city.

After crossing the bridge, we will reach Son Tra district. Continuing on Pham Van Dong road, we will reach Vo Nguyen Giap sea road. The long coastline of the city will have 3 roads connecting each other. There are 2 roads named after two islands of Vietnam, Hoang Sa, and Truong Sa. The middle of these two roads will be Vo Nguyen Giap street, the middle street bears the name of a famous general of Vietnam. His great contributions helped Vietnam unify the country in 1975.

During today's trip, I could not use my car. Because my line of cars are scooters. This vehicle is not allowed to go to the Son Tra peninsula. So we had to travel by my friend's motorbike. Looking at this car, you can think of our difficulties when we arrive at Son Tra peninsula, right? But that does not mean that this trip is not made. To reach the Son Tra peninsula, we will move on this beautiful sea road. High-rise hotels with sea views and beaches with white sand and clear blue water. When going to the end of the sea, there will be a marina, with many basket boats moored near the shore. Here is the intersection between the mountains and the sea.

When going up the mountain, the car goes very slowly, the engine of this car is very low and the number of years of operation of this car is also very long. We started having problems with this car when going up steep slopes. There are many beautiful places on the Son Tra peninsula. First, we passed a freshwater lake located under Son Tra mountain. I saw a lot of white birds, flying near the lake. In the summer days, the weather is sunny and sometimes rainy. So the sky is not very blue. Continuing to go up the mountain, I passed Linh Ung pagoda, looking from below the pass, we can observe the tall statue of Buddha and Bodhisattva. Under this temple, there are many beautiful beaches and rocky shores. If everyone has come to visit Linh Ung Pagoda, then remember to visit the beaches here, you will not be disappointed.

At the end of this road, there is a smooth green lawn, which is a scenic spot for visitors. Many monkeys are sitting on the rocks here. We've been sitting here resting and looking at them for a while. Son Tra peninsula is known as monkey mountain, where there are many monkeys. The monkeys here are very close to humans, they don't panic when they see strangers. Many tourists gave food, making the monkeys lazy to search for food. There have been many cases of monkeys getting angry and attacking humans. On the right-hand side of the road is the Son Tra beach, behind the other mountain is Ghenh Bang beach.

From the scenic spot to the road leading to Ghenh Bang will take 2km. There will be a warning sign when fishing. We parked the car here, to start the journey of walking through the forest to reach the sea. I've been to Ghenh Bang once before in 2018 and I'm very confident going this route. In the forest there are many old trees, the rhizomes of the stumps grow around the forest, the roots clinging to the big rocks are very beautiful. Looking at the rhizomes, we can see the values of nature bestowed on this forest. From the parking lot to the rocky shore, it will take about 150m, although it is only 150m, this road has a very steep slope. This forest is densely covered with green trees, so there will be very little sunlight that can shine down on this forest. After the rainy season, the small rocks are covered with green moss, the road will also be very slippery and difficult to walk on this road.

Halfway through, the real difficulties begin to appear. The thorns grew in this forest, covering all the roads. I had thorns pierced my clothes and scratched a lot. As we went deeper into the forest, the light became darker. The trails also began to narrow. The road began to be difficult to walk, thorns began to appear more and more. After walking for a while, I returned to a small tree that I used to pass. At that time, I knew I was lost in this forest, this area had no phone signal to call for help, and the drinking water was also starting to run out. Fortunately, my phone has a compass, I used the compass to observe the direction and re-determine the way, to get out of this forest. We walked to the west of the forest, fortunately, I heard the sound of a stream flowing nearby. We walked closer to the sound of that stream. After seeing the stream, we were delighted. If you follow the stream, you will reach the beach. But around the small stream, thorn bushes grew a lot, so we only went near the stream area. There were a lot of overgrown thorny bushes, and we had to crawl over and remove the thorns, piercing our clothes. After walking for a while, I saw a lot of garbage with plastic bottles and sponges on the ground. I could guess that we were very close to the sea, the garbage was caused by the high waves brought inland.

We heard the sound of the ocean waves and started to get closer to it. This is a photo I took when I was in the forest when I could see the sea. For me, this is the best photo today. We were very excited and happy after more than 3 hours lost in the forest. Finally got to this beach.

People will probably think why, I didn't find my way to the parking area, but went down to the sea. If we continue to go into the forest it will be very easy to get lost again, instead, we will reach the shore, where there will be many fishing boats and will help us. My friend was sprawled out on the rock, exhausted. I feel sorry for my friend. This is his first time walking in a forest, exploring an unspoiled place. I think in the future if I ask my friend to go to this place, he probably won't want to go here anymore.

On the right-hand side of the beach. I can observe Ghenh Bang from afar. From here there will be many high cliffs under the sea. We had to climb up to reach Ghenh Bang rock. On this road, there are many beautiful rocky beaches, the rough rocks are sharpened, due to the influence of the wind and sea waves. So the rock holes with sharp points, are facing the coast. In winter, the seawater is quite cold, but due to climbing on the cliffs, we feel very hot. We swam here with cold water. At this rock hole, there is an old tree clinging to the rock and there is a lot of groundwater flowing from the roots of the tree. We took water bottles to catch the grill. These are the purest natural water drops. When it was full of water, we started to approach Ghenh Bang. The high rocks could not hinder us from conquering Ghenh Bang.

After reaching Ghenh Bang, strong waves hit the shore. This place has a very wide sandy beach, the stumps clinging to the rocky mountains, making this place more beautiful. Besides the dark yellow rocks, there is a very beautiful little cave under the sea. The waves hit the shore so hard that I couldn't approach this place. On the sandy beach around Ghenh Bang, there are many dead corals and lakes washed ashore, with very impressive tree shapes. If you can camp overnight here, it will be great, in the afternoon you can catch the sunset behind the mountain. But today we did not prepare for this trip, so we had to return before dark. Thinking back on the upcoming journeys that I will enter that lost forest, I don't know if I will get lost again.

Ghenh Bang area has a phone signal, I called my uncle. I asked my uncle, is there another way. After talking on the phone for a while, I was directed to another easier route. This road is located next to Ghenh Bang sand beach, this path is also easier to go, compared to the original path we took. It took us less than 20 minutes to climb to the top of the mountain. But this area is located 2km away from my parking area. The path that led us up was the same area where we had seen the monkeys that afternoon. Why didn't I know about this path? There was a resident here who told me that before, there was only one road in the rapids that we took at first. But now everyone has abandoned the old way, to go this way. Since no one has been walking on the old road for a long time, this forest has grown a lot of thorny bushes, covering all the paths in the forest. On this trip, I was overconfident about myself. Do not bring any necessary equipment when going to the forest, nor research in advance for the trip.

If you later want to visit Ghenh Bang, follow this road. The coordinates of this road are "16.13464, 108.310311", where people can park their cars here and stay overnight. This path is very easy to walk, there are many ropes, for people to cling to when going down steep slopes. Life is full of unexpected events that we cannot avoid. The only thing I could do wrong was to change my perspective and do better next time. In today's post, I encountered unexpected incidents that I didn't expect, but through this article today, you can learn from my experiences and avoid unfortunate situations later.

Thank you everyone for reading my post, have a nice weekend everyone.

#Here Linh Ung pagoda https://peakd.com/hive-163772/@danghao/linh-ung-pagoda-a-sacred-space-in-the-heart-of-da-nang-city
Dong Dinh museum https://peakd.com/hive-163772/@danghao/dong-dinh-museum--son-tra-peninsula--a-place-to-preserve-culture-through-many-layers-of-time