CIP Orchid Lounge Da Nang Airport: Bad Priority Pass Lounge?

Worth Coming to Airport Early For: NO (bad food, not the greatest physical space inside)

Better Than The Terminal? YES

In this post, you’ll find:

1. Introduction
2. How to Access This Lounge
3. Where To Find the Lounge in the Airport
4. Lounge Tour & Amenities
5. Conclusion

Introduction

After a fun few days relaxing at the Hyatt Resort Da Nang and exploring the city and nearby areas, it was time to head to my next stop: Singapore. My grab ride from the Voco Ma Belle Da Nang to Da Nang airport took just 15 minutes and cost around ~$3USD. I’ll miss these prices. Seriously though, how do these prices even cover the cost of gas? It’s crazy.

After flying through Hanoi Noi Bai airport, my expectations were relatively low for Da Nang Airport. However, to my surprise, this airport was significantly newer and nicer, with tall ceilings and tons of natural light.

How to Access This Lounge

This lounge is accessible via priority pass. I got in with the priority pass membership I have via my Amex platinum. The lounge is technically open 24 hours per day. Stays here are capped at maximum 3 hours, although in practice I’ve never seen that actually enforced, ever.

In general, priority pass lounges in Asia are quite nice relative to the US. Unfortunately, this lounge was a bit underwhelming against those expectations (more on that later).

Where To Find the Lounge in the Airport

This lounge can be found in Terminal 2, which is the international terminal at Da Nang airport. The lounge is fairly easy to locate; take a right turn after security and you can’t miss it.

The lounge is located directly up these stairs:

Lounge Tour & Amenities

This lounge design is interesting, and is split into two sections: “Outdoor” open air seating under the terminal, and “Indoor” within the lounge doors. The open air seating was the best feature of the lounge, with great people watching a a solid espresso machine, which honestly is the main thing I care about in any lounge:

The inside of the lounge, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. The interior design was felt like early 2010s Silicon Valley “fun” office:

The worst part of this lounge was the food selection. While there were plenty of options, none were particularly appetizing and all looked ultra processed / not good.

Rule #1 of how to avoid food poisoning in Vietnam: avoid leafy greens sitting in open air:

They did have some plastic-covered pho options you could pour hot broth into, which looked decent.

I was not going to venture to try any of this food, which I was fine with, given my upcoming flight was on Singapore airlines who I knew would feed me well (even in economy).

Conclusion

I would not recommend going to this lounge early, or at all honestly. It’s worth going for a free drink or espresso, but the food is horrible so make sure you eat before coming. However, the redeeming factor of the lounge was the decent seating in the “outdoor” part of the lounge with good people watching in the terminal. After hanging out here for a bit, I was on to my first flight ever with Singapore Airlines (which luckily had great food, even for an economy flight).