Finding expat community in Danang Vietnam is one of the first challenges you face when landing in this beautiful coastal city. So this blog post will share my hard-earned lessons after 18 months of community isolation, with practical advice for making meaningful connections in a new city or country.
Table of Contents
When you first arrive in any new city the questions pile up quickly.
- Where should I live?
- Where do the “real” expats hang out?
- Why does everyone seem either married and settled, or just here to party?
- Why is it so hard to find normal, outgoing people who’ve been here for years and live regular lives?
These questions echo throughout expat forums, and they mirrored my own silent thoughts during our 18 months in Danang. The tourist areas felt too transient, the local neighbourhoods felt impenetrable, and the middle ground—that sweet spot where meaningful community happens—remained frustratingly elusive.
Looking back now, I realise my biggest regret wasn’t about where we lived, but about the connections we never made.
This wasn’t my first experience abroad, but it was my first time staying somewhere long enough that the lack of community became a genuine void rather than just a passing observation. The pattern we fell into happened gradually, almost without us noticing it.
The Comfortable Isolation of Expat Life
When my wife and I landed in Danang, it was after travelling around the West Coast USA and Vancouver for a month, where we’d connected with dear friends and likeminded adventurers at the final World Domination Summit in Portland.
It was also the first time we’d left Sydney and Australia after the two years of being in one place during the COVID pandemic. After being stuck at home for so long, we were hungry for something completely different.
Vietnam made sense as my wife is Viet so she can speak to locals and connect to her culture, and the past two times we had visited Danang we’d loved it. I was also recovering from pandemic burnout, and rethinking my life and career until that point.
My wife and I slipped into an easy routine in Danang. We found our first apartment to rent in a good area (Ngũ Hành Sơn). It was 10 minutes walk to the beach and came with a rooftop pool. We then rented a scooter.
Within no time we had our favourite local food spots where the owners would greet us with familiar smiles. We also knew which local Danang cafés had the best wifi, yummy drinks, unique vibes and friendly staff.
We weren’t antisocial—we just prioritised differently. We avoided the digital nomad meetups at bars (most seemed to revolve around drinking, which didn’t align with our health-focused lifestyle). Instead, we carved out our own little world, just the two of us.
We even had a couple of good Sydney mates visit Danang at different times for a week each, and it was great to hang with them and explore Danang and Hoi An with them, and play tourist.
One time there was a travel vlogger visiting Hoi An for a few days, who my good buddy George introduced us to. My wife and I joined Jennie Johnson for a hike up to the top of Marble Mountains which was fun, and we showed her our fave cafe at the time and had lunch together on a different day.
(Btw, Jennie has a cool travel guide for exploring Hoi An and others you can check out on her website)
We also met some Melbourne-based Viet Aussies who were visiting Danang with their parents. We connected online through the Asian Hustle Network fb group, and we ended up having egg coffee together at another of our fave local coffee spots, and also joined them for dinner Japanese style which was fun.
These connections were genuinely enjoyable but ultimately temporary by nature—our long-time friends were just visiting for a week at most, and the others were just passing through Danang themselves. In both cases, the time limitations meant these interactions couldn’t develop into the kind of ongoing local friendships that become part of your daily life in a new place.
I had also considered joining a coworking space as I knew there would be expat digital nomads there, but after doing some initial work i.e. looking up Google Maps for a few spots, I didn’t follow through with it. I just couldn’t get excited about it, especially since I wasn’t really making money at the time and didn’t want to spend cash just to meet people.
The Hidden Cost of Self-Sufficiency
Looking back, I recognise that while we were experiencing Danang, we weren’t fully integrating. There’s something uniquely grounding about having friends who understand the specific challenges of your current life chapter.
I think another mental hurdle that we didn’t really address was wanting to connect with and make friends with local Vietnamese people. But they already have their own lives and friend groups. It’s pretty hard to break into friend circles that have been tight for years and decades. It’s like if a stranger tried to become friends with my group of uni mates – not very likely to happen.
The fact that C is quite introvert and rarely strikes up random conversations with strangers (unless they talk to her first) didn’t help. And I can’t speak Vietnamese at all (yeah, I suck). So we got stuck in this place of – want to connect with locals but can’t, and not really wanting to make the effort to connect with expat community.
I guess the main reason we were there was for healing ourselves, and giving our marriage (our #1 relationship) priority.
I noticed this same pattern in online discussions too. As one long-term member of the ‘Expats in Danang’ Facebook group put it:
“Most of us, non-Vietnamese locals, have been here for many years and don’t have the urge (anymore) to hang out in specific places to meet new people. We do the same things as what we used to do in our home countries: go to work, play some sport, spend time with friends (who have also been here for a long time)…”
I now understand this perspective from both sides. The established expats had their circles, and I was simply too passive in creating my own.
My wife did travel to India for a month to do yoga teacher training in Rishikesh. During that entire time I stayed in Danang alone, and just frequented my fave cafe daily, ate the usual things, and focused on my writing and connecting to friends and colleagues via social media and occasional zoom calls.
What I Would Do Differently
If I could rewind to day one in Danang, I’d make three key changes:
- Look beyond the obvious meetups. Just because the bar scene wasn’t our thing didn’t mean we couldn’t find other connection points. Sports groups, cooking classes, or volunteer opportunities would have aligned better with our values.
- Be specific about what I wanted. As one Expats in Danang community member advised: “If you really want to meet people, I suggest to write in this FB group what kind of persons you would like to meet. The more specific your definition, the easier it’ll be to connect with someone.”
- Accept that building community takes consistent effort and putting yourself out there. Back home, I had friendships built over decades. I wasn’t going to replicate that depth in weeks, but showing up consistently and being open to new connections would have been a start.
The Community Paradox
There’s something strangely contradictory about expat life. We’re bold enough to uproot ourselves and move across the world, yet sometimes too shy to knock on the metaphorical doors of new friendship.
Instead of seeing community-building as another task on the relocation checklist, I now see it as the foundation that makes everything else better. A great café is better with friends to meet there. A beautiful beach is more meaningful when you’re not always experiencing it in isolation.
Finding Expat Community in Danang: Final thoughts and Moving Forward
Do I regret my time in Danang? Not at all. Those 18 months were filled with growth, adventure, and countless memories with my wife. But I do regret not creating space for more meaningful connections. It’d be nice to have local and expat friends to visit next time we return to Danang for instance.
For anyone planning their own move to Danang (or anywhere), don’t make my mistake. Your routine and explorations will happen naturally, but community requires intention. Start reaching out before comfort zone inertia sets in.
Be specific about what you’re looking for, be persistent, and remember that the richest experiences abroad often come through the people you meet—not just the places you visit. Next time I live abroad, I’m giving myself a challenge – reach out to one new person each week, even when it feels uncomfortable. That’s the only way to build the community I wish we’d had.