23-Jan-2014 -- We spent 3 weeks in Viet Nam in January to visit our older daughter who has now settled in Ho Chi Minh City. We took our chance to visit N16 E108 and N10 E104 during our trip since these 2 points were close to our itinerary.

This point is located in the Ba Na hill range somewhat 25 km west of downtown Da Nang. By studying the maps and satellite view before our try we learned that there was now a cable car (Picture 2) operating from the hill bottom and allowing us to reach the hill top very easily. So our plan was to use the cable car, then walk down the road (used by Viet Nam and other previous visitors to get close to the point, back in 2006). We estimated that this road should run approximately 420 meters south of the CP. At this point we intended to hike downslope full north until the point.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t achieve this plan. Things has considerably changed in the Ba Na hills since the 2006 visit ! Our first surprise was that there is now a huge construction area on the hill top. In fact, the summit has been completely erased and the whole area is to become an amusement park (Picture 3 & 4) ! The contractor undertook a huge part of the construction work during the winter season and the road was closed to any traffic other than the trucks. We were able to walk down the road until 530 meter west of the point and were then stopped by a security officer who denied us further access to the road (Picture 1, 5 & 6). There was nothing to do to change his mind and the access was further denied by the head of the security that we joined by radio. We gave up our try at this point and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the construction area. The architects of the project have made the choice of mixing all the architectural influence they could gather from european medieval castles to classic religious Asian pagoda (Picture 7) and modern, full comfort, resorts. To us the resort under construction on the hill top will look quite ugly ; we certainly won’t try this CP again. On a further occasion we rather will spend some more time visiting My Son and the famous ruins of the old Champa kingdom lying 30 km south of the CP (picture 8).