Many of you who know us may remember that Jon and I consider the 4^th of July to be our anniversary date – both from dating and from when we got married. One of our first dates was with his friend Bryan to see the fireworks in Bay City (still, in my opinion, best in the world!). The following year, we spent the night in Niagara Falls and viewed the fireworks from over the river. Fireworks have always been special to us since they remind us of when we first started dating as well as of our hometown. Therefore, when we learned that the neighboring city of Ðà Nẵng (hereinafter Da Nang) was hosting a fireworks festival, we knew we had to attend.

We spent the first part of the festival standing on this bridge before moving closer to the stage once it started raining.

The Da Nang International Fireworks Festival started in 2008 and had changed from an annual event to a biannual event, with the seventh festival falling in the spring of 2017. Contrary to previous years, the 2017 festival was held over five Saturday nights between April and June. The first four of these were competitions between two countries each night, with the fifth event being the finale between the three best performers. The theme for the event was the five elements, which you may remember are also the names of the Marble Mountains nearby. We attended on Metal Night (May 27) with a competition between China and the UK.

Scheduled to begin at 8:00pm, we left our hostel and walked to the bridge to try and find a good spot at about 6:00pm. By then, families and groups had already staked out places along the railing, taking up most of the space actually over the river. We squeezed into a small spot over the edge where the land meets the water and settled in to wait for the start of the show. By the time it started, the bridge was so full of people that we had bodies pressing in on us from all sides; there was no such thing as personal space! On stage (which we couldn’t see), announcements were being made with random cheers going up for different people or sponsors. Finally, after 20 minutes of this, the lights on the bridge dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd as we all eagerly waited for the first firework to go off.

The fireworks were spectacular!

Speakers were spread throughout the viewing areas, on bridges and along the sides of the river. Each team set their show to music for all to hear and took approximately 30 minutes for their demonstration. China went first and oddly had two songs from the Titanic soundtrack as part of their music selection. Their firework display was nice, but a bit difficult to enjoy due to the sheer number of people pressing in on us. At one point, the man behind me rested his hand and cell phone on my shoulder to take pictures and videos of the fireworks.

Once China had finished, a brief intermission occurred for the teams to switch places. It was during this time that the skies opened up and it started raining steadily. Many around us got out ponchos or umbrellas, with many more people quickly walking away and leaving the site. They delayed the start of the UK show to try and wait for the rain to clear, so we had a few minutes in which to decide what to do. Armed with neither poncho nor umbrella, we were getting soaked in our shorts and t-shirts. Since we were already wet, we decided to make the best of it and head down along the shore closer to where the fireworks are set off in the hopes of getting a better spot. Our perseverance paid off with uncrowded spots along the railing, about half the distance that we were on the bridge. The rain eventually slowed to a light sprinkle so the fireworks competition resumed.

We had a great view for the second set of fireworks!

The UK was next and we enjoyed the show much more than China, in part because we had better positions from which to view and also in part because they were better! The UK chose popular and upbeat songs, all relating in some way to metal (such as Sia’s Titanium, a crowd favorite). Eventually, the festival ended and we sloshed our way back to the hostel to change into dry clothes and wind down. We later found out that the UK made it to the finale, along with Australia and Italy, and emerged victorious at the end!

Seeing the firework festival was a fun and special evening for us. Because of our history together, we had a wonderful time seeing how other countries put on a display compared with the US. The rain made the evening memorable and I’m so happy that we decided to stick it out, looking and feeling like drowned rats, and watch the second half of the competition. While there, we saw hardly any other tourist; we were in crowds of Vietnamese who were all so excited to be in Da Nang for such an important festival. This was definitely one of the highlights of our entire time in Vietnam!

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but I was soaking wet at the end of the night!