Handy engineering: Vietnam’s ‘Golden Bridge’ has giant support

Breathtaking structure in Ba Na Hills attracts scores of tourists since opening in June

Nestled in the forested hills of central Vietnam two giant concrete hands emerge from the trees, holding up a glimmering golden bridge crowded with gleeful visitors taking selfies at the country’s latest eccentric tourist draw. Video: Reuters

In the mountains of central Vietnam, a colossal pair of hands lifts a golden thread of walkway high above the clifftops, as if the mountain itself has sprouted limbs.

“I feel like I’m walking on clouds,” said Vuong Thuy Linh, a tourist from Hanoi. “It’s so unique”.

Since it opened in June Cau Vang, or the “Golden Bridge”, in Vietnam’s Ba Na Hills has attracted scores of tourists, eager to see a novel piece of architecture famed for its unusual design.

Tourists take a photograph on Cau Vang, or Golden Bridge, near Danang in Vietnam. Photograph: Kham/Reuters
Tourists take a photograph on Cau Vang, or Golden Bridge, near Danang in Vietnam. Photograph: Kham/Reuters

The pedestrian walkway, designed by TA Landscape Architecture in Ho Chi Minh City, sits at over 1,000m above sea level and extends over the treetops from the edge of a leafy cliff face, offering tourists uninterrupted views of the majestic landscape beneath.

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The bridge was designed to evoke the image of the "giant hands of Gods, pulling a strip of gold out of the land", said Vu Viet Anh, design principal at TA Landscape Architecture.

“It creates a walkway in the sky, among the foggy and fairy-like lands of Ba Na mountain,” said Anh, who added that he had been surprised at the level of attention his firm’s design had attracted both locally and internationally.

The Ba Na Hills, a popular getaway for the French during the colonial occupation of Vietnam, received more than 2.7 million visitors last year, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

But it is the Golden Bridge and its supports – two huge stone-coloured human hands styled in such a way that it looks as if the jungle is struggling to reclaim them – that have garnered the most attention from visitors.

“The two, smooth, giant hands look real,” said Truong Hoang Linh Thuy, another tourist. “It makes me feel like humans can do anything”. – Reuters