We have been in Vietnam for two months already (wow, time flies) and our last two weeks would be spent in the beach city of Nha Trang, in south central Vietnam. It is a return to the beach and the Pacific Ocean, as we started in the beach city of Da Nang.
We arrived via car, as I mentioned in the Dalat posts that the airport in Dalat is closed until the end of September, 2026 (when it will re-open, new and improved). It was a 3-hour drive down the mountain, with lots of curves, but not as many as on the way from Saigon to Dalat.
We were told a few things from other travelers before we arrived in Nha Trang. The big two were: #1 that it was a more “rustic” Da Nang (Nha Trang used to be a much more popular place before it was supplemented in recent history by Da Nang, so dated and bit grimy), and #2 (from Australians), that it was “full of Russians.” Both of these statements turned out to be true, however neither were detrimental to our enjoyment of Nha Trang.
We arrived at our hotel and noticed that there were lots of Russians. We have never been to Russia (though one day I would like to visit St. Petersburg) and there are not so many Russians visit the US, so we were unfamiliar, but recognized the language immediately. Russia is such an enormous country, with people ranging from blonde haired/blue eyed Caucasians to dark haired with Asiatic features. We could only tell when they would speak to each other, and, over our two weeks in Nha Trang, we came to like hearing the Russian language.
This did add to the tourist vibe of Nha Trang, as most restaurant menus were translated into Russian, we were offered services (like tours and massages) in Russian, and there were many business signs in both Vietnamese and Russian as well. Koreans were a distant 3rd in tourist populations visiting Nha Trang, yet there were still a fair amount of Korean BBQ restaurants.
Nha Trang is like a smaller Da Nang, with mountains surrounding it, and a bunch of tall buildings (hotels and apartment/condo complexes) centered near the beach. The beach is not as big, and was packed every day with Russian tourists enjoying a beach vacation. There are many loungers to rent for the day to swim and enjoy the sun. Our first stop was the beach to check it out, only a five minute walk from our hotel.
Overall, the Russians we encountered (and, of the people we encountered, it was about 85% Russians) were respectful and we enjoyed the beach a lot because they would pick up (as well as not leave) trash on the beach. They would also not smoke on the sand, rather they would use the park benches behind the beach. While not the most friendly people, they were not rude or mean either; they were vacationers like any other we have encountered this summer.
It was so hot that we spent most of our time walking the beach, until we passed all the rental chairs and reached open beach, where the wind surfers would launch from. We enjoyed watching them while swimming, as the water was not the calmest. It was shallow for the first 10 feet or so, then it dropped quickly and we could barely touch 15 feet out. The waves, while never intense, were also never calm, either.
Our hotel had a rooftop pool that was nice to take a dip after swimming in the ocean. We found the sweet spot between checkout time and before check-in time for our fellow tourists. There was a huge building that blocked a full-on sea view, but we could see around it, and attained an even better view of the city and mountains.
There are not really a ton of cultural things to do in Nha Trang; There aren’t even big malls; one we visited had all the stores open to the center of mall with no actual storefronts; it was congested and not a fun shopping experience. There are many, many sellers of knockoffs all over, on the street and in small shops. Nha Trang is mainly for beaching, massages, and cheap shopping.
There are massage places every third business, it seemed, in the busy area of the city. Every night we would walk to dinner we would be called to by every massage place, sometimes in English, usually in Russian, offering foot or full body massages. Our hotel had a massage spa; next door their was one, across the street another, and a dozen within a block of our hotel. Pricing ranged from $8-10 for a 60 minute foot or body massage at an average place (meaning the body massage was not in a private room, but behind a curtain with about 4-8 other tables in the same big room) or $15-$25 for a 90 minute massage at nice spa in a private room. Thus, we had a lot of massages and they were great.
Not too far from our hotel was a big market hall, and next to it is an outdoor market. I went one afternoon after a massage, but they mainly sold tourist items (and durian!), so I left empty handed.
We still did some cultural things over our two weeks in Nha Trang, starting with a small museum right across from the beach that we walked to one day. The Alexandre Yersin Museum, while small, is very memorable, more so for how interesting of a person Alexandre Yersin was.
We visited a park named for him during our time in Dalat, and we already knew he was a famous microbiologist, discovering that rats carried the plague. We learned at the museum that Yersin had an insatiable curiosity about life and found Vietnam the place he wanted to spend his life. He was a physician (there is a hospital next door to the museum), cartographer (he mapped a lot of Vietnam), astronomer, agronomist (he ran huge farms in Vietnam), and photographer. Yersin also really prided himself on caring about his patients, as we would say nowadays, had excellent bedside manner. A truly impressive person.
There is a big landmark, called the Tram Huong Tower, that we had seen on videos about Nha Trang; it is located at the half way point of the beach, in the park that runs along the whole beach front. Maybe it is supposed to look like waves?
Lastly, we really enjoyed the food. Not the Vietnamese food, as that was average at best (we had Pho and Banh Mi, which was better elsewhere in the country), but the Western and other food options were really good. There were lots of restaurants within 10 minutes of our hotel, and all were pretty great. We tried Armenian food, ate Indian twice, Greek twice, Thai, Pizza/Wings, and great cheeseburgers twice. It was all so unexpectedly good.
Nha Trang was a great place for some R&R. In the next post we will explore some of the Temples in and around Nha Trang, stay tuned!
Phil's WayPastCool 