№ 01What is on the Son Tra Peninsula

The Son Tra Peninsula is a forested headland pushing east into the sea at the northern end of Da Nang. Locals call it Monkey Mountain. It is a designated nature reserve, which is why a city of well over a million people has old-growth forest fifteen minutes from its centre.

Three things bring people onto the Son Tra Peninsula, and they suit different bikes and different amounts of time:

№ 02The Son Tra Peninsula scooter rule nobody warns you about

This is the single most useful thing in this guide, so it goes near the top. The upper roads on the Son Tra Peninsula are steep — long, sustained gradients with tight bends and a serious drop. Automatic scooters have no engine braking: the only way to slow one down is the brakes, and holding them for a kilometre of descent heats them until they stop working. People have crashed doing exactly that.

So the management board banned automatics from the steep sections, and it is enforced:

• Manned checkpoints. Officers sit at the junctions where the steep roads begin. They look at your bike and wave you back if it is an automatic. This is not a formality you can talk your way past.
• Affected routes: the climbs to Ban Co Peak and to the Thousand-Year Banyan — that is, the two things most people came for.
• What you need instead: a semi-automatic (Honda Wave, Blade) or a manual bike, where you can drop a gear and let the engine hold you.
• What still works on an automatic: Linh Ung Pagoda, the coastal road, the lighthouse and the lower viewpoints. That is still a good half-day.
• The alternative: join a jeep or guided tour up top, which is how most visitors on scooters end up seeing Ban Co.

№ 03Linh Ung Pagoda and the Lady Buddha

Linh Ung Pagoda sits at Bai But on the southern flank of the Son Tra Peninsula, facing the city across the water. It is free to enter, open through the day, and reachable on any bike.

The statue of Quan The Am — the Lady Buddha — stands 67 metres, roughly the height of a thirty-storey building, and is visible from most of Da Nang’s beachfront. What visitors rarely realise is that it is hollow: the interior holds 17 floors, with 21 smaller Buddha figures placed on each one. She faces the sea, in the local tradition of watching over fishermen.

• Dress for a temple. Shoulders and knees covered. Nobody will shout at you, but you will feel out of place.
• Go early or late. Mid-morning brings coach groups. Before 8:00 the courtyard is almost empty and the light on the statue is better.
• The view back is the point. From the terrace you look straight across at My Khe and the whole city curve.
• Free parking in the lot below the complex.

The part almost nobody knows about. The statue is not solid. There are seventeen floors inside it, each with an altar holding twenty-one Buddha figures with different faces, postures and expressions — the Vietnamese phrase for the arrangement is Phat trung huu Phat, a Buddha within a Buddha. The ground floor holds Amitabha, Avalokitesvara and Ksitigarbha; from the second floor up the altars are the twelve manifestations of the bodhisattva. A staircase runs all the way to the seventeenth floor, inside the head.

The lotus base is 35 metres across, and there is a two-metre Buddha figure set into the crown. Two Vietnamese sculptors, Thuy Lam and Chau Viet Thanh, spent six years building it, from 2004 to 2010. It is the tallest statue of Avalokitesvara in Vietnam.

№ 04The red-shanked douc langur

The forest on the Son Tra Peninsula holds about 1,335 red-shanked douc langurs in 237 troops — a primate so brightly marked it is sometimes called the queen of primates, with grey body, maroon-red legs, white forearms and a golden face. The species is endangered and strictly protected, and this peninsula is one of the few places on earth you have a realistic chance of seeing one from a public road.

Do not feed the langurs on the Son Tra Peninsula. Feeding habituates wild primates to people, which ends badly for the animals every time. Watch, photograph from a distance, and leave the fruit in your bag.

№ 05Ban Co Peak, the highest point of the Son Tra Peninsula

Ban Co Peak — Chessboard Peak — is the high point of the Son Tra Peninsula, named for the statue of a sage sitting at a stone chess board with the sea behind him. On a clear day you see Da Nang, the Hai Van range and the coastline running south past My Khe.

Two ways up, and the difference matters:

• By road — steep, and closed to automatic scooters at the checkpoints described above. Fine on a semi-automatic ridden carefully.
• On foot — a trail of roughly 6 km, steep but far quieter than the road side precisely because vehicles are not allowed on it. This is also where hikers most often see the douc langurs.

The Thousand-Year Banyan sits on the eastern side, a vast old tree with aerial roots forming a grove. Same restriction applies on the approach road.

№ 06The route to the Son Tra Peninsula from Hoi An

From Hoi An to the Son Tra Peninsula and Linh Ung Pagoda is 36.8 km, about 1 hour 11 minutes of riding by the coast road. There is a shorter-looking inland option at 40.6 km, but it is slower and far duller.

1. Leave Hoi An on the beach road. North past An Bang and Ha My with the sea on your right.
2. Follow Vo Nguyen Giap through Da Nang. This is the beachfront boulevard running the length of My Khe. Flat, straight and fast.
3. Keep going past the Han River mouth. The road bends right as the peninsula rises ahead of you.
4. Turn onto the peninsula road. Signs for Linh Ung. From here it climbs gently through forest.
5. Pagoda first, then decide. If you are on an automatic, do the pagoda, the lighthouse and the coastal viewpoints. If you are on a manual, carry on up towards Ban Co.

№ 07Beaches, coves and the lighthouse

Most visitors do the pagoda and turn around, which leaves the eastern side of the Son Tra Peninsula almost empty.

• Tien Sa lighthouse. Yellow and white, sitting above the water on the eastern shore. Reachable without the steepest climbs.
• Bai But and Bai Rang. Small coves below the road with clear water and rock rather than the wide sand of My Khe.
• The coastal viewpoints. Unmarked pull-ins all along the loop road. The ones facing back at the city are best in the afternoon.
• No shops up there. Bring water. Once you leave the pagoda area there is very little until you come back down.

№ 08When to go, and how long you need

Allow half a day for the Son Tra Peninsula from Hoi An if you are doing the pagoda and the coast road: roughly an hour and a quarter each way, plus two hours up there. A full day if you add Ban Co Peak, the banyan, or a stop at My Khe on the way back.

What the day actually costs, riding from Hoi An:

So under 100.000₫ for the whole thing if you already have the bike, which makes this the cheapest half-day out of Hoi An by a distance. The one cost that catches people is renting the wrong machine: if you turn up on an automatic and the checkpoint sends you back, you have paid for a day of riding and seen the bottom third of the hill.

Bring more water than you think. There is nothing to buy above the pagoda, the climbs are steep enough to be work in the heat, and the shade on the upper roads is patchy. Two bottles per person, and a windbreaker if you are going up late — it is noticeably cooler at the top and the descent in the dark is cold on bare arms.

№ 09Questions we get asked

Making a day of it: the Marble Mountains sit on the same road out of Hoi An, and My Khe Beach is the natural lunch stop before you climb.

Updated August 2026. Distance and time measured on Google Maps from Hoi An to Linh Ung Pagoda with avoid highways enabled: 36.8 km, about 1h11 via the coast road. Restrictions on automatic scooters on the steep upper roads are set by the Son Tra peninsula management board and enforced at checkpoints; rules can change, so ask locally if in doubt. Douc langur population figures are the commonly cited estimate for the nature reserve. Administrative note: since 1 July 2025 the wards of Tho Quang, Nai Hien Dong and Man Thai have formed a single ward named Son Tra, and district-level administration was abolished.