Visiting Da Nang’s Famous Lady Buddha… Then the Rain Hit 🇻🇳

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]We are here in Daang, Vietnam. And unfortunately, it is very overcast day, so we didn't get up for the sunrise.

[00:00:05]>> We kind of figured it wouldn't be worth it. It was also still raining when we [clears throat] were supposed to be leaving, so we thought we would try another day.

[00:00:14]>> But we are right now headed to Bikini Bottom again. I know you saw it in the last video, >> but when we were there, we saw the breakfast menu, and I just thought we had to come back because it looked so good. So, that's how we're going to start our day, but we got a lot more planned that's not on the beach and also not in the city.

[00:00:30]>> We're heading towards the Lady Buddha and then right next to it is supposed to be a beautiful lookout hike that we're going to do and hopefully it's a little less overcast and we get some cool views of the bay.

[00:00:45]>> Okay, so I kind of built my perfect breakfast because I had a bunch of add-ons. So, I got two pancakes, hash browns, and bacon. And then I have some syrup to put on my pancakes. I'm so excited for this. I have been telling Tanner I've been craving pancakes for probably a week now. So yeah, I'm happy.

[00:01:06]And then I also got my salt coffee because that's my favorite here.

[00:01:12]So good. Hits it every time. I'm going to have to start making my coffee like this at home.

[00:01:19]Yum.

[00:01:26]Classic diner pancakes.

[00:01:29]They're good. They're good. Little bit hash brown.

[00:01:36]They're so crunchy. Could use a little bit more salt, but I just like my food salty. This is a very western breakfast that is hitting this spot.

[00:01:44]>> All right, it's my turn. I got an egg coffee. And how you're supposed to drink this is to start with a little bit of the top.

[00:01:53]It's like a caramel foam on top of coffee. You'd be surprised. Egg coffee maybe doesn't sound that good, but it's super good. This is a good one, too. On my plate, I got a hash potato instead of hash browns. It's basically a block of potato.

[00:02:13]This actually seasoned super well. Sir hers was a little not enough salt, but they salted this up. And I'm going to try the patty here as well. The beef patty, also very well seasoned. And this was the grand slam breakfast. Only about $7.

[00:02:32]And as you can see, it has a little bit of everything, even a fruit bowl. I think that will probably be our last time eating at Bikini Bottom, even though it is so delicious.

[00:02:40]>> If you're in Daang, definitely check it out.

[00:02:43]>> Now, we're just waiting for our Grab.

[00:02:44]It's only about $6 to get to Lady Buddha from here. 6.7 km away. I'm excited to see it.

[00:03:02][music] We made it to the Lady Buddha statue.

[00:03:07]So, we're trying to figure out if we need to pay to get in here or if it's a free entry kind of thing.

[00:03:13]>> Looks free. Car parking was free.

[00:03:17]I'm not seeing anywhere that you buy tickets.

[00:03:20]>> There's some rules, though. We'll go read those.

[00:03:23]>> Already changed into my pants, so we're good to enter.

[00:03:34]The grounds here are very wellmaintained. It's a really nice kind of like just courtyard area.

[00:03:40]>> Lots of little bonsai. And then this really beautiful kind of gate towards the viewpoint of the city.

[00:04:00]The rain clouds behind [music] us are moving in quickly. I think those last clips that we got were our last bit that we'll get with sunshine while we're up here. So, I'm just hoping it doesn't rain on us again.

[00:04:20]Sierra just spotted some monkeys and we are getting hit with some rain. So, I think we're going to go find some coverage.

[00:04:27]>> Oh no, [laughter] >> it's starting to really come down.

[00:04:36]>> It feels like the rain has stopped. I was right. It only [music] lasted like a few seconds. So, we're continuing on.

[00:05:00]and terrifying at the same time.

[00:05:02]>> And we've made it to Lady Buddha.

[00:05:08]>> It's almost hard to appreciate how large this structure is cuz you can see it almost looking like Christ the Redeemer from the beach. And it is really just massive here.

[00:05:21]>> I was not expecting a bunch of monkeys up here when we made our way over.

[00:05:35]Oh my god.

[00:05:44]>> For sure. That monkey just about landed on my head.

[00:05:48]Look at I'm covered in all this stuff.

[00:05:50]It was getting off the tree to come down on top of me.

[00:05:54]This is a major tourist location for sure.

[00:05:58]>> There's a a lot of people here. And when we were coming up here, we saw like what 50 tourist vans.

[00:06:06]>> Tons of tourists vans. And everyone just taking photos. Seems it's not that crowded from the video that I just took, but it seems when you're here very crowded. It's still really spectacular, really.

[00:06:27]>> [music] >> So, I was really wondering why throughout the Buddhist temples that we visited so far, some are male and some are female. And then each Buddha kind of looks there's different forms that the statue can take. And we learned about some of them from one of our last tours that we took in Ho Chi Min. But we still haven't learned the difference between the male and the female Buddha. And so what Sierra is referring to is sometimes you might see a fat Buddha who like you're supposed to rub its tummy and that's the laughing Buddha and that represents like the Buddha has a full belly and when you rub its belly you give it some of your bad luck and it's able to like hold that in his belly.

[00:07:02]There's the resting Buddha and it's kind of like a li it's a position is lying down. Uh and that has another meaning.

[00:07:08]It is really starting to rain. But what we just looked up for the um female Buddha and why this statue is a female.

[00:07:15]By the way, it's 67 m tall. And it's because as Buddhism came to Vietnam and China, the look of the statues already when you see a male Buddha, you might think, "Oh, that kind of looks maybe like a female Buddha."

[00:07:30]>> Everyone's freaking out. But we're here under a tree.

[00:07:33]>> You should show what it looks like. Oh my god.

[00:07:38]It is absolutely pouring rain and I don't think we're protected by this tree anymore. We need to find a way around.

[00:07:45][laughter] >> I think we're good now. The rain here starts to go like heavy for 10 seconds and then it dies off. You can see everyone taking cover behind me >> here. The reason that there's lady Buddha is because in the past and something that I've noticed is that a lot of even the male Buddhists kind of have the a feminine appearance. And so I think as Buddhism came to different countries and into Southeast Asia, the appreciation of motherhood kind of shifted the art into female form and then it resulted in like an actual female Buddha figure. And that's what you see here. I think the only one bigger that we've seen is the one in Chiang Rai that we got to go inside of and see through its third eye. That's the only one that's been bigger than this one. And you can see this one all the way down from the beach here. And it's supposed to be like a beacon of good luck for the fishermen >> and protection. And since the rain is done, everyone is back looking around and taking pictures.

[00:08:49]So weird.

[00:08:55]very far away.

[00:08:57]>> We don't love interacting with the monkeys because we know if you get bitten, you got to go get like rabies shots and stuff like that, but other people do and we like to watch it >> from very far away.

[00:09:11][music] >> Now, even though Lady Buddha is the main pull of this kind of destination here in Daang, there's actually a lot of beautiful structures here.

[00:09:21]>> Mhm. Lots of pagotas that are very beautiful.

[00:09:49]Well, we are headed back to May Beach.

[00:09:53]As you could see, the cloud coverage on the mountain would not make for a great viewpoint >> and it was still raining on and off. So, we decided that it wasn't even really a hike. It was more of a viewpoint. After we looked into it a bit more, we thought we'd be able to walk there, but it said it would take us three and a half hours to just like hike the road basically.

[00:10:17]So, we decided against doing the viewpoint. We thought the temple had some pretty nice viewpoints, so we were pretty happy and instead we're going to do a nice long beach walk.

[00:10:27]>> Get our exercise in for the day. One thing that we've noticed being in Vietnam, and this is really like I think an unusual thing because anyone that we've talked to local has said like there's like one rainy day per dry season. Obviously, when you're living the dry season over and over again, you feel like there was less rain than there actually is, but we have been stuck in rain for like the last two weeks, and we just want it to be sunny. I think we'll be able to take a nice walk on the beach, though.

[00:10:56]>> Definitely smells more fishy here, for sure.

[00:11:01]>> We are on the far side of the beach this way, and all of the fishing boats are over here. It's a lot calmer of a surf.

[00:11:08]And yeah, it smells like fish.

[00:11:10]>> [music] >> It's a few hours later. [music] We've gotten a lot of work done and the weather has turned pretty rainy and we're going to meet a friend for some nice dinner.

[00:11:26]>> I always think it's great to try to if people that you know are in your area, even if you barely know them, but they're like was your [music] classmate or something like that. Go see them. try to meet up with them, especially in a different country, because you have something in common, which is that you know each other a little bit from back home. But the weather today has not been able to make up its mind. It's been raining, not raining, and now [music] it's I think it's decided.

[00:11:49]>> Yeah, I think that's going to be the summary of our weather while we're here, unfortunately. But we'll make the most of it.

[00:11:55]>> Got the ponchos.

[00:11:58][music] >> [music] >> First up, we got the pork spring rolls.

[00:12:29]>> These are good. These are really good.

[00:12:30]These are probably the best spring rolls we've had.

[00:12:32]>> Whoa. I guess that's a Michelin guide for you. We thought there was going to be a line here, so we came a bit early and no line. We got sat down right away.

[00:12:40]There's 15,000 reviews on Google.

[00:12:44]>> So, you want to try this?

[00:12:45]>> That's pretty impressive. I'm going to try one of these sprinkles.

[00:12:53]>> They're good.

[00:12:54]>> That's seasoned so well.

[00:12:56]>> That's delicious. I don't know how to eat it properly, so I'm just kind of uh >> I think you just probably dip it in or something and then eat it together.

[00:13:05]>> Exactly.

[00:13:09]>> Maybe nine out of 10.

[00:13:12]>> That's pretty good.

[00:13:14]>> Yeah.

[00:13:18]>> Oh, wow. She puts a whole pancake in it.

[00:13:24]So, she just showed me how to eat the banjao. This is like a pancake rice.

[00:13:28]You've seen it in another one of our videos. What she had here was some peanut sauce and some fish sauce that she mixed together. And now I dipped this in here.

[00:13:42]It's so crispy. And here they call it a rice pancake instead of a egg pancake.

[00:13:49]So, I think it might not be all egg in this one.

[00:13:54]So fresh, so crispy. I can see why this place is on the Michelin guy. What I have here is a beef wrapped in beetle leaf. And I've seen this on a lot of menus and I like when things are wrapped in this. There's another Middle Eastern dish that's with rice inside and it's super delicious. But I think it's grape leaves. This one looks very similar. I'm just going to try it straight up because I'm very curious how it tastes.

[00:14:19]M the beef is super smoky and I think almost the beetle leaf it was just cooked in that and so there's not much flavor to that but the beef is just super smoky and it was barbecued.

[00:14:30]This is a good dish and usually you wrap it the same as the other thing you just saw me eat. But this time I just wanted to try it straight up.

[00:14:37]>> I have my own Vietnamese pancake. Got it wrapped into a roll. This is my favorite dish here.

[00:14:44]This is the first time we've had something other than just fish sauce to dip it into. This is like peanut and fish sauce. I'm really excited.

[00:14:57]>> The best. The best I've had.

[00:15:02]>> Dinner was absolutely delicious.

[00:15:05]>> That was a great Michelin Guide restaurant. If you're in Daang, check that one out. It first like great meal that we've had that's been Vietnamese.

[00:15:14]We had a few good western food, but that's the best Vietnamese food we've had here so far.

[00:15:17]>> And still really affordable. Like a lot of the time when we've gone to these places, I'm a bit worried like, "Oh, this is going to be more than what we're used to." But obviously it's not a 40k dong boni. But it was really good.

[00:15:30]>> Stay tuned for our final vlog in Daang.