Halong Bay to Da Nang Drive: Road Trip Tips & Info

Da Nang is laid-back and friendly, maybe because everyone you meet has just finished an amazing meal. Culinary tours are a hugely popular way to experience literal local flavor. After you’ve stuffed yourself with bold noodle soups and savory street foods, walk it off by exploring the limestone caves and Buddhist grottos of the Marble Mountains.

If you’re planning this same drive and want to know all about it – how long it is, how long it takes, and where to stop along the way – read on. By the end of this post, you’ll know everything about the drive between Halong Bay and Da Nang.

How far is Da Nang from Halong Bay?

As the crow flies, it’s roughly 348 miles between Halong Bay and Da Nang. Luckily, we can’t skip over all the good stuff and have to drive – that means seeing some of the sights and countryside between these two points.

For driving, it is roughly 510 miles or 820 km between Halong Bay and Da Nang. This may vary slightly depending on your start and end points.

Halong Bay to Da Nang drive hours

In terms of travel time by car, the 510 miles drive from Halong Bay to Da Nang takes 11 hours 35 minutes. Again, your final drive time depends on where you start in Halong Bay and end in Da Nang.

This is a really long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would actually take, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would be if you drive with stops.

Halong Bay to Da Nang road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from Halong Bay to Da Nang, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Da Nang, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what we are perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over a number of days.

Road trip: 2 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 11 hours 35 minutes hours on the road with 2 overnights

Itinerary

Start at Halong Bay.

Drive for about 3 hours, then stop in Đường Trần Phú and stay for about 2 hours. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in Quốc lộ 1A, QL.1A. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 3 hours, then stop in Cách Mạng Tháng 8 and stay for about 2 hours.

Finally, drive for about 1.6 hours and arrive in Da Nang.

Halong Bay to Da Nang airports and flights

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Cat Bi International Airport (HPH)

Arrival airport: Da Nang International Airport (DAD)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 35 minutes

Getting to your destination: 3 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an example flight from HPH to DAD and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 41 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Halong Bay to Da Nang including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Flying non-stop from Halong Bay to Da Nang

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Halong Bay and Da Nang. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.

Flight time from Halong Bay, Quang Ninh Province to Da Nang is 42 minutes under avarage conditions.

Our flight time calculator assumes an average flight speed for a commercial airliner of 500 mph, which is equivalent to 805 km/hr or 434 knots.

Actual flight times may vary depending on aircraft type, cruise speed, routing, weather conditions, passenger load, and other factors.