Da Nang & Hoi An, 4 Nights

Da Nang's airport is in the city, so within half an hour of landing you are on My Khe, the long beach that faces east across the sea. The afternoon is the beach. In the evening the Han riverfront and the Dragon Bridge, a steel dragon carrying the road across the river, which breathes fire and water at nine on Saturday and Sunday nights; on other nights it is simply lit. Dinner of mi quang noodles or grilled seafood on the riverside.

West into the Truong Son mountains, 42 km, to the foot of Ba Na, the hill station the French founded in 1919 at 1,500 m. The cable car up — 5,801 m without a support, a world record when it opened in 2013 — passes over forest and waterfalls to the Golden Bridge, the walkway held out over the valley by two enormous stone hands, and on to the French village on the summit with its cathedral, square and cooler air. Lunch on the mountain. Back down mid-afternoon for the beach.

South along the coast to the Marble Mountains, five limestone hills rising from the flat land at Non Nuoc: the stair (or the lift) up Thuy Son to the pagodas and the Huyen Khong cave, where a shaft of light falls onto the Buddha at midday, and the view down the beach to the Cham islands. On to Hoi An, 28 km from Da Nang, and an afternoon in the Ancient Town — the Japanese Covered Bridge of the early 1600s, the Chinese assembly halls, the merchant houses — before dusk, when the lanterns come on and a rowing boat takes you onto the Thu Bon among them.

Early to My Son, 36 km inland, the temple city of the Cham kings built between the 4th and 13th centuries in a valley under Cat's Tooth mountain: brick towers with their carvings, the groups the French catalogued in 1899, the bomb craters of 1969 among them. UNESCO listed it with Hoi An in 1999. Back by lunch. The afternoon is An Bang beach, a few kilometres from the old town, or a bicycle through the Tra Que herb village and the paddies; the evening is the old town again, quieter on foot after nine.

A last walk in the old town before the shops open, a coffee on the river, and the drive up the coast to Da Nang airport, about 45 minutes, for the flight home or onward. Travellers with a late flight can add a cooking class in the morning or a return to the beach; the transfer time is fixed by the flight, not by us.