The area actually has several mountains, and the one that most people visit is called Thuy Son. It's about halfway in between Da Nang and Hoi An, right on the strip known by Americans 40 years ago as China Beach.
When you approach, Thuy Son resembles West Rock in our home of New Haven, so, except for the heat, it's a similarly strenuous climb--about 20 minutes up on a steep stone staircase if you didn't stop at all the temples and souveneir vendors on the way up.
Scattered around the top are several caves with high ceilings and open-air chimneys. They're all filled with a variety of Buddhist alters and statues, and most have one or two rooms behind the largest room. A flashlight isn't strictly neccessary, since sunlight pours into most rooms, but some of them are dark. Lots of bats call the caves home, of course.
Also at the top is a panoramic view of the beach and villages surrounding, and the headlong development that is going on in the area is very apparent. The sounds of dozens of hammers and saws at once can be heard ringing up from the valley floor.
We arrived about 8:00 a.m. and had a nice time exploring for about 90 minutes without getting hassled too much by touts. When we left at around 10 a.m., it was getting a lot more crowded.
We rode out there on the backs of our friends' motorbikes--about 30 minutes from Hoi An--and it was interesting to see a country highway that way. We had a little bit of an adventure on the way when the motorbike I was on got a flat tire. We pushed it about 50 yards until we came to a roadside repair man. You see these everywhere in Vietnam. In the cities, they set up shop on street corners and lean two tires upright against each other, wrapped in brightly colored paper, to indicate that they are open for business. The equipment is just a tool box, some batches and a bicycle pump, and the fancy ones have a gas-powered compressor to speed up the work. On this country highway, it was more like an actual shop in front of the mechanic's house, and we sat under an awning drinking tea with his grandmother who must have been 90 years old.
-Robert
