I’d seen a lot of history in Hội An, so it came as something of a pleasant change to take a short car ride to visit a tourist attraction, which was only built within the last decade. 

The Golden Bridge is a 500-foot pedestrian bridge located high in the Ba Na Hills in central Vietnam.  Unlike most bridges, the Golden Bridge doesn’t really connect one place with another; it is just a ‘thing’ in its own right.  And, although it is called the Golden Bridge and, although it is golden, its goldenness is not its most distinctive characteristic.  Any savvy marketeer would surely have called it the Hands Bridge.  Or the Big Hands Bridge.  Or the Big Stone Hands Bridge.

The Golden Bridge is reached by cable car.  It is quite a long journey – 20 minutes within the Trường Sơn Mountain range.  We pass through bright sunshine, thick cloud, emerging into bright sunshine again. 

Up the top of the mountain is a Disney-like Sun World resort complete with various ‘world’ zones – a French castle and village; a German beer hall; a Dutch garden – but I am not interested in any of this fakery.  I am here for the bridge.

And it does not disappoint. 

It is a totally bonkers construction.  The view from it over the clouds is spectacular; the huge stone hands holding it aloft, majestic.  It is a folly, but a deliberate one and built on an epic scale and, as such, deserves unreserved praise.

© E. C. Glendenny

E. C. Glendenny applauds the Golden Bridge.