Twenty-eight kilometres. Twenty-eight minutes in a car. Of all the journeys in Vietnam, Da Nang to Hoi An is the one that should need no explaining at all.
And yet this is the route where I have watched more travellers waste more time than on Vietnamese journeys three times its length. Not because the road is difficult — it is flat and dull in the best possible way. Because almost everything written in English about how to get from Da Nang to Hoi An is describing a bus that stopped running in 2020, or a bus that was renumbered out of existence in 2025. And because the last three hundred metres of your journey cannot be driven at all.
This article is about those two problems, and about what actually happens when you arrive.
First, something nobody has told you
On 1 July 2025, Quang Nam province ceased to exist. It was merged into Da Nang, and Hoi An — which had been a city in its own right — became a ward of Da Nang.
Da Nang to Hoi An is no longer a journey between two places. Administratively, it is a trip across one city.
That sounds like trivia. It is not, and here is why it matters to you. It is the reason the bus routes were renumbered in July 2025. It is the reason “the provincial tourist office” no longer exists to answer your email. And it is the single cleanest explanation for why the English-language advice on this route is in the state it is in: the ground moved a year ago and the internet has not noticed.
Nothing about the journey itself changed. Everything about the labels on it did.
The numbers, measured on the road
Every distance below is measured along the actual driving route, not in a straight line, and the reference point in Hoi An is the Japanese Covered Bridge.
| From | Distance | Driving time, no traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Da Nang International Airport (DAD) | 28.3 km | 28 min |
| Central Da Nang (Han Market) | 31.1 km | 30 min |
| Airport, via the coastal road | 44.4 km | 44 min |
Three things follow, and all three are useful.
The airport is closer to Hoi An than the city centre is. Not by much, but it is. If you land at Da Nang and your hotel is in Hoi An, you do not need to go into Da Nang first and you should not.
The fast road is not the pretty one. This surprises people. The quickest route runs inland — Truong Chinh, then Highway 1, then Hung Vuong through Dien Ban — and you will see rice, workshops and stone yards. The coastal road past My Khe and Non Nuoc, which is the one every photograph of this journey was taken on, is sixteen kilometres and sixteen minutes longer. Your Grab driver will take the inland road, because that is what the app pays him to do. If you want the coast, you have to ask, and you should expect to pay a little more.
“Half an hour” is a no-traffic figure and Da Nang has traffic. Between roughly 07:00 and 08:30, and again from 16:30 to 18:30, add fifteen to twenty minutes. For a flight out of Da Nang, budget ninety minutes from Hoi An regardless of what the map promises.
There is no train — but there was once a tram
Hoi An has no railway station. The North–South line runs through Da Nang and turns inland; it does not come near Hoi An. If you arrived in Da Nang by rail — a fine way to come, and the way I would come from Hue — your train journey ends there, and the last thirty kilometres are by road whatever you do.
It was not always so. A 0.6-metre narrow-gauge steam tramway once ran from Tourane to Faifo, as the two towns were then called: authorised in 1903, opened in stages from November 1905, fully running by October 1907. Thirty-five and a half kilometres, ten stations, one of them at Marble Mountain and one at Faifo itself. A typhoon on 27 October 1915 destroyed the trackbed near Marble Mountain, and the line closed on the last day of that year after eight years of service. It was never rebuilt.
I mention it partly because it is a good story and partly because it is a useful corrective: the reason there is no train is not that nobody thought of it. Somebody built it, and the weather took it away.
The bus problem, which has two layers
This is the part I most want you to take away.
For years the standard budget answer here was the yellow bus, route number 1 — around 20,000₫, board at Da Nang, get off in Hoi An. It is in guidebooks. It is in blog posts. It is, still, in the top handful of English search results, and it is on several large Vietnamese travel sites too.
That bus was suspended in March 2020 and never came back. It does not appear anywhere in Da Nang’s current route register.
Then, for a few years, the answer was LK02, an inter-provincial route that started well outside central Da Nang. A lot of the more recently updated English guides have caught up to this one and now confidently recommend it.
LK02 was merged out of existence on 18 July 2025. It and the old city route 02 were combined into a single service.
What actually runs today is Route 02: Central Bus Station – City Administrative Centre – Cua Dai, 46.7 km, operated by Phuong Trang (FUTA Bus Lines). One route number, one operator, and — usefully — a Da Nang terminus back at the Central Bus Station, where the old yellow bus used to start.
So the English internet is currently offering you two dead route numbers, and the second one only died last summer. This is what a well-trodden route looks like when the facts move faster than the pages describing them: nothing announces itself as wrong, it just sits there, ranking.
Option 1: Grab or a taxi
This is what most people should do, and what most people do.
Grab is the ride-hailing app that works in Vietnam. Book a car from Da Nang or from the airport and you will pay roughly 250,000–350,000₫ (about $10–14) to Hoi An. You see the fare before you confirm. There is no meter, no negotiation, and no conversation about it at the other end. Quoted ranges vary quite widely between sources and seasons — I have seen credible 2026 reports as low as 200,000₫ and as high as 500,000₫ — so treat the figure above as the middle of a real distribution rather than a fixed price.
Metered street taxis cover the same ground for broadly similar money: Mai Linh, Vinasun and increasingly Xanh SM, the VinFast electric fleet, which is now the one you will see most often at the airport rank. The reason to prefer an app is not that the taxis cheat you. It is that the price is settled in advance and in writing, which removes the only part of this journey that can go wrong.
Not for you if: you land after about 23:00, when driver supply thins and surge pricing bites. Book a transfer instead.
Check before you book: whether your hotel is inside the pedestrian zone. If it is, your car cannot reach the door — see below. Give the driver a bridge or a street corner rather than the hotel name.
Option 2: A pre-booked private transfer
350,000–500,000₫ (about $14–20) for the car, booked ahead, driver waiting in arrivals with your name on a card.
On paper this is Grab with a mark-up, and for a daytime arrival that is exactly what it is. What you are buying is certainty at the two moments an app is worst: a late-night landing, and a first arrival in Vietnam with a family, four suitcases and no local data yet.
Not for you if: you arrive in daylight, travel light, and already have a working SIM or eSIM. You are paying a few dollars for nothing.
Check before you book: that the price is per car and not per person, and that airport parking and waiting time are included. Both are common places for a quoted price to grow.
Option 3: The airport shuttle
Here is something the English-language guides almost universally get wrong. They will tell you no bus serves Da Nang airport.
There is in fact a registered route — 01SB, Da Nang Airport to Hoi An — running 10-seat vans at a flat 120,000₫, calling at both the international and domestic arrivals halls and terminating at the Cua Dai pier car park. It has been in the register since late 2025. Two other ordinary city routes, 03 to Ba Na Hills and 06 to Viet Han University, also call at the airport.
Two honest caveats. Its departures are keyed to flight arrivals rather than a clock timetable, so you cannot plan around it the way you would a scheduled bus. And English-language information about it is close to nonexistent, which means you are somewhat on your own at the other end.
Alongside it there are commercial tourist minibuses at roughly $5–6 per seat, sixty to seventy-five minutes, which do run to fixed times and can be booked online.
Not for you if: your flight lands between departures. An hour waiting in the terminal has erased the saving.
Check before you book: the drop-off point. Cua Dai pier is about six kilometres from the Ancient Town, which is a taxi ride you had not budgeted for.
Option 4: The public bus, described honestly
Route 02, Phuong Trang. This is the current answer to “is there a Da Nang to Hoi An bus”, and yes, there is.
The fare is distance-based: 8,000₫ for short hops, rising to 30,000₫ for the full run under the published tariff. Conductors also commonly ask around 10,000₫ for a large suitcase. This is not in the tariff, it is not a scam either, and it is not worth arguing about. Pay the conductor in cash and carry small notes.
Buses run from about 05:15 to 18:30, every fifteen to thirty minutes, roughly sixty trips a day. End to end the schedule allows ninety minutes; from the city administrative centre it is closer to seventy. There is no evening service in either direction.
Two things to know before you commit.
It does not go to the airport. Route 02 runs from the Central Bus Station, not the terminal. From the airport you would need a Grab to reach it, at which point you have spent the saving.
It does not drop you in the Ancient Town. The useful stops are on Ly Thuong Kiet street. From the furthest of them, by the ÊMM Hotel at number 187, it is about one kilometre and thirteen minutes on foot to the Japanese Bridge; stops nearer the centre shorten that. With a rucksack that is a pleasant walk. With wheeled cases in August it is a bad afternoon.
Not for you if: you have luggage, you are arriving after dark, or you are coming from the airport.
Check before you book: nothing — you cannot book it. Be at the stop before 18:00 and have small notes.
Option 5: Riding it yourself
120,000–200,000₫ per day for a scooter, about an hour on the road, and this is the one option where the coastal route is the obvious choice rather than an expensive indulgence.
It is a genuinely easy ride by Vietnamese standards: flat, wide, well surfaced, sea on your left the whole way. If you are going to ride anywhere in Vietnam, this is a reasonable place to start.
It is still Vietnam, and there is one legal detail that catches out more English-speaking travellers than any other. Vietnam recognises only International Driving Permits issued under the 1968 Vienna Convention. The standard permit issued by AAA in the United States is a 1949 Geneva permit and is not valid here. An IDP also cannot grant you an entitlement you do not already hold at home — so you need a motorcycle category on your own licence first. Since January 2025 the Vietnamese classes are A1 up to 125cc and A above it; a typical rental scooter sits in A1. Without the right paperwork your travel insurance will almost certainly decline a claim, and that, not the fine, is the part that should worry you.
Not for you if: you have not ridden before, or you are carrying luggage that will not strap down.
Check before you book: that the helmet fits, and photograph every existing scratch before you ride away.
From the airport, specifically
| Da Nang airport to Hoi An | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Grab car | 250,000–350,000₫ | 30–45 min |
| Metered taxi / Xanh SM | 250,000–400,000₫ | 30–45 min |
| Private transfer, pre-booked | 350,000–500,000₫ | 30–45 min |
| Tourist minibus | about $5–6 per seat | 60–75 min |
| Route 01SB airport van | 120,000₫ flat | about 60 min, to Cua Dai pier |
| Hotel shuttle | free–300,000₫ | 30–45 min |
| Route 02 public bus | Does not serve the airport | |
The hotel shuttle line deserves a second look. A good number of Hoi An hotels, and not only the expensive ones, will collect you from Da Nang airport at little or no cost — and a good number of guests never find out, because it sits in the booking terms rather than being offered. Email and ask. The worst answer is no.
The part nobody tells you: the Ancient Town closes to traffic
Here is where this journey differs from every other transfer in Vietnam, and the reason this article is not four hundred words long.
Hoi An’s Ancient Town is a pedestrian zone for much of the day, and your driver is not allowed in.
The restriction is not a single rule but a stack of overlapping windows, which is why sources disagree so freely about it. In outline:
- On the core streets — Tran Phu, Nguyen Hue, Cong Nu Ngoc Hoa and the Hoai riverside — all motor vehicles are excluded from about 15:00 to 21:30, with a morning window around 09:00 to 11:00.
- Between roughly 13:30 and 16:00, vehicles may drop passengers but may not park.
- On the approach streets — Hai Ba Trung, Ba Trieu, Ly Thuong Kiet, Ngo Gia Tu, Thai Phien — bans run about 11:00–13:30 and 16:30–19:30.
- Phan Chau Trinh, added to the zone in 2023, runs its own evening schedule.
- Closing time is 21:30 in summer and 21:00 in winter.
Bicycles and cyclos are not merely tolerated — the zone’s official name in Vietnamese is “street for pedestrians and non-motorised vehicles”. A bicycle is the correct way to move around Hoi An and rents for about 30,000–80,000₫ a day.
Enforcement is by physical barriers and by people standing at them, and it varies. What does not vary is the direction of travel: Hoi An has been restricting motorbikes in the old quarter since July 2004, and every change in twenty-plus years has tightened the rules rather than loosened them. There is active discussion of extending the motorbike ban to all hours.
The practical consequence, which almost nothing written about Da Nang to Hoi An transport mentions, is this: whatever you pay for your ride, it ends at the edge. Taxis, Grabs, private transfers and hotel shuttles all stop at the perimeter. You walk the last stretch — usually two hundred to five hundred metres, over cobbles, with your luggage.
None of this is a problem if you know. It is a genuinely unpleasant surprise at four in the afternoon in July if you do not.
What to do about it
Time your arrival if you can. Landing between about 11:30 and 13:30 puts you in the widest gap in the restrictions. An arrival at 16:00 is the worst case, and 16:00 is when an enormous number of flights land.
Ask your hotel where cars stop. Not “what is your address” — every hotel has an address, and half of them are unreachable by car for six hours a day. Ask specifically: where does a taxi drop guests, and how far is the walk. A hotel that answers that question clearly is telling you something good about itself.
Consider staying outside the core. An Bang beach is 5.3 km from the Japanese Bridge, about ten minutes by car, and cars go all the way to the door. Cam Thanh and the Cua Dai side are similar. You trade lanterns on your doorstep for a ten-minute ride each evening — and for anyone with children or heavy bags, that is often the better trade.
The ticket, and what it is actually for
You will read that entry to Hoi An Ancient Town costs 120,000₫. That is what you will be quoted, and it is also widely misunderstood.
The ticket is not an entry fee for the town. It is a heritage pass: it admits you to five of the twenty-two protected sites — the Japanese Covered Bridge, the assembly halls, the old merchant houses, the museums — and it funds their conservation. It is sold at eleven booths around the perimeter.
Walking the streets is free. Crossing the bridges, eating, drinking, shopping, photographing lanterns at night, sitting by the river: none of that requires a ticket, and nobody will stop you. In the evening the booths wind down anyway.
Two details are genuinely unsettled, and I would rather say so than pretend. Validity is printed as twenty-four hours, but Da Nang’s own tourism portal now describes it as usable across a stay of up to three days, and travellers report everything in between. And an 80,000₫ tier exists: the city portal presents it as a smaller bundle of sites available to anyone, while other sources describe it as the price for Vietnamese citizens. If you are offered it, take it; do not plan on it.
Whether to buy at all is a real question rather than a formality. If you intend to go inside the old houses — and the merchant houses on Tran Phu are the best thing in Hoi An that is not simply the light on the river — then 120,000₫ for five of them is not much money. If you are here for one evening to see the lanterns, you do not need it.
Getting back to Da Nang
Everything above runs in reverse at the same prices, with three differences worth knowing.
The bus stops early. Last departures are around 18:30, so it is not an option for an evening return and never an option for an early flight.
Morning traffic into Da Nang is worse than evening traffic out of it. For a flight, leave Hoi An with a clear ninety minutes in hand rather than the forty-five the map promises.
And Grab availability in Hoi An is thinner than in Da Nang, especially before 06:00. If you have a dawn flight, book a car through your hotel the night before. This is the one leg where the app can quietly let you down.
Worth stopping for on the way
Marble Mountains — Ngu Hanh Son — are 18.9 km from Hoi An, about twenty-three minutes. If you are travelling from central Da Nang they are effectively free: 9.9 km city to mountains plus 18.9 km on to Hoi An is shorter than the 31.1 km direct route, because the direct route runs inland and the mountains sit on the coastal side. From the airport it is a genuine detour of about six kilometres. Either way, most drivers will wait an hour for a modest extra fee if you agree it before you set off, not after.
An Bang beach, 5.3 km from the Ancient Town, is a reasonable first stop if you arrive too early to check in.
Further out, and day trips rather than detours: My Son sanctuary is 39.7 km from Hoi An, about forty-three minutes; Ba Na Hills is 48.5 km and about forty-four minutes — though that is the drive to the cable-car station, and the Golden Bridge is a paid ride further up the mountain.
So which one
If you are landing at Da Nang airport with luggage: Grab, or a private transfer if it is late or you are a family. The saving from anything else is a few dollars, and the cost is an hour you have just flown a long way to spend.
If you are already in Da Nang, travelling light, in daylight, and enjoy this sort of thing: Route 02, knowing that you will finish with a kilometre on foot.
If you are alone, on a budget, and landing: ask about 01SB at the airport, and have a tourist minibus booked as your fallback.
And whichever you pick, look up the pedestrian hours before you arrive, and find out where your hotel expects cars to stop. Twenty-eight kilometres of this journey are easy. The last three hundred metres are the only part that requires a decision.
How we checked this
The distances and driving times here were measured on routing data between fixed points — Da Nang airport, Han Market and the Japanese Covered Bridge — rather than repeated from other guides. That is the only reason the coastal figure appears at all: nobody quotes it, because nobody measures the two roads separately.
The bus section was rebuilt from Da Nang’s own published route register and from the July 2025 announcement that merged LK02 into route 02. We went to those because the English-language sources contradicted each other, and because several of them were confidently describing a service withdrawn in March 2020.
Two things on this page are genuinely unsettled, and we have said so rather than picking a number and sounding certain. The pedestrian hours differ between official and operator sources, particularly the morning window. And the Ancient Town ticket is quoted at 120,000₫ everywhere on the ground, while Da Nang’s tourism portal describes a two-tier structure with longer validity — which one you are offered appears to vary.
Vietnamese fares, timetables and administrative boundaries change often; this route changed province in July 2025. Everything here was accurate in September 2026 — confirm on the day you book, and if you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
Other Vietnam routes: Hanoi to Sapa, Hanoi to Ninh Binh and Hanoi to Ha Long Bay.
