I quite like Da Nang. At least the northeastern coast, where I’m staying. It feels a bit small-town-like, just with skyscrapers. It actually reminds me a bit of Trøjborg (a neighborhood in Aarhus, Denmark) — a small town in the middle of a big city. But it also feels like a district that isn’t quite finished. A bit like a new-build neighborhood where only a single pair of houses stand finished, while there’s a nice freshly paved road, lamp posts, sprouting privet hedges and driveways without a house to go with them.

When I look around the cityscape, there are many buildings and restaurants under construction or renovation. It feels as if this part of the city is going through some kind of renewal. Once it’s all finished in a few years, Da Nang will be able to welcome even more wealthy beach-happy tourists. In the rows of houses from the beach inward there are several old houses that are being completely rebuilt. It creates a somewhat funny picture of nice new marble-clad columns side by side with tin shacks.

I have two different places to stay planned in Da Nang. They’re very close to each other, maybe 1 km. The first place, Salux, I only booked for 4 nights, since it wasn’t my first choice, but it met my criteria for price, location and was available. The second place, Chilala, was where I actually wanted to stay. A bit cheaper, a bit higher rated, a bit better location. Wouldn’t you know it, I actually prefer the first one over the second?

A quick comparison of the rooms gives a similar picture — though with one big difference. They’re both mediocre budget hotel rooms. The room is clean ‘enough’. Sheets and towels have small discolorations and stains, but are fresh and freshly washed. AC works, and there’s a fridge for my water.

But in the room at Hotel Chilala I don’t have a window. No daylight can get into the room. And my key card doesn’t work for the door, so I’ve just been given a door code instead. I’m staying in room 203, and the door code is 203203. I wonder what the door code is for the other rooms.

From Salux I walk out into a city park. There’s activity on the playground. Children play while the adults are grouped around the exercise equipment. From the city park I can walk 2 rows in to a small alley, where there’s a selection of restaurants and shopping. It’s lively, but not packed like in Hanoi. If I walk down the side street, there’s a cozy café where I’ve gradually become a regular. Here I like to get something to drink and sit with the computer for a bit. The waterfront is right around the corner. Here I can just walk as far as I like, along a nice sandy beach. Everything I need, at a pace I like.

From Chilala I walk out onto a densely packed street. The air is heavy and smells of food. There are neon signs as far as the eye can see. On the street there are around 25 massage/spa salons. Outside each of them stands an employee asking passers-by “massage? spa?”. No, it’s not a red-light district. The hotel’s location in the middle of the street, combined with the street only having 2 entrances/exits, means I have to walk along the street and get asked repeatedly, several times a day, whether I want “massage? spa?”. If I get off the street and turn down toward the water, there’s only one road to cross, maybe 50-100 m. A promenade has been built along the coast with high-class dining. The prices for a meal at these restaurants approach Danish prices and are 5-10 times more expensive than if I eat at the family restaurant next to my hotel, and 20 times more expensive than if I took the stool in front of the pho bo shop.

On the other side of the road, and the reason I have to take a detour to get to the beach, skyscrapers are being built like crazy. There are already 10-12 of them lined up, with the next batch on the way.

While I’m sitting having a Vietnamese burger down on the expensive promenade, I take out the computer. As you know, given where you’re reading this story, I’ve made a website. Apart from a bit of research, the whole site was made after I left Denmark. It’s a WordPress site with a workflow that converts it into static pages and deploys it on Vercel. I have my own domain, which is set up for both the website and a mail server. There’s an accompanying YouTube channel, which I use for my videos, which I also make myself. Version control and local database backups are set up as a system. Small helper scripts have even been made to process and organize videos and photos from my iPhone, so I can more easily make new stories.

If you ask any random IT professional, I haven’t made anything exceptional. It’s probably actually pretty basic, roughly beginner level. But I can’t remember the last time I had a hobby programming project that I automatically kept coming back to, not because of work, a deadline, or a promise, but just because I felt like it. Completely without having to “build up momentum” or “find the motivation,” I’ve carried a project through from start to finish.

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