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About a month ago, over the April 30 holiday, I went to Nha Trang for a few days for relaxation.
Nha Trang is a beach city about an hour flight away from TPHCM. When you’re getting there by plane, the trip into the city is quite pleasant as the roads are good and not crowded. It reminds me of getting to Kuala Lumpur from the airport by taxi, and it’s definitely much nicer than going into TPHCM or Hanoi. One thing to note is that it rains a lot in Nha Trang; both of my trips there have been filled by rain, despite being during two different times of the year.
I stayed at the Green Hotel for about $60 a night. That’s a bit expensive for me, but overall, the room was good. Their breakfast buffet (included with the room), however, is terrible.
Regarding food, as I write this, I can’t really remember where I ate or find my receipts to give recommendations. If I find the information later, I’ll just add it to the comments or edit the post, but if you ask a taxi driver where all the seafood restaurants are, they should take you along a long stretch of road near the beach. There’ll be a number of restaurants, and that’s where you’ll find Muoi Do (the name translates to “10 Dollars”), a great seafood joint where locals go (it’s the most crowded). Good pricing, and they can cook- it was the best of the four restaurants we went to for seafood, and no more expensive.
Here’s more about the various things you can do in Nha Trang:
The Thap Ba Hot Springs with its Mud Baths are one of the key attractions to the city, both for Vietnamese and foreigners. Brochures for the springs claim that it has been certified by the government for its health benefits and at about $13 USD per person for the basic mud bath, it’s interesting enough to try. You can lay in a warm mineralized mud solution (it’s definitely mud) that’s been soaked in the natural spring water of the area for about 30 minutes to let the minerals sink in, supposedly improving arthritis, skin, and a bunch of other things- basically, it’s supposed to do you some good. Whether it does or not, I won’t argue that, but it is nice and relaxing. If you’d like to spend more money (I did), you can get a spa treatment (getting both the spa and mud bath runs close to $30 USD per person) in which you get to lie in a spa tub filled with mineral water after the mud bath. You also get a foot massage as part of the deal. Overall, I liked it, but I wouldn’t come to Nha Trang just for that. It’s something unique, though, and is nice if you’re in Nha Trang already with the goal of relaxation.
2) Island Tours and Beaches:
Nha Trang, despite being a popular beach destination, does not have good beaches. Even going to separate island beaches, there’s nothing like what you will find in Thuan An or Lang Co near Hue. There are a number of companies offering one day tours, you’ll probably see brochures at your hotel.
3) Scuba Diving:
Scuba Diving, unlike the beaches, is a good reason to come to Nha Trang. There are number of PADI-certified services and you can get quality instruction and even become licensed yourself for relatively (compared to the US) cheap rates. This is the one thing I wanted to do on the trip but couldn’t, mainly because of the rain. There are a quite a few different companies offering their services there, and I suggest walking around downtown to find the right one for you, but here’s one website: Scuba Zone
4) Vinpearl:
Vinpearl is an island resort off of Nha Trang that combines amusement park, water park, and hotel resort in one. Unless you want to stay at the hotel (over $100+/night), you can get to the island by taking the world’s longest over ocean cable car for 300K VND ($17 USD). That may sound a bit expensive for Vietnam, but once you’re over there, you have access to everything for free, excluding the normal food and shopping.
That’s not too bad at all, but at $17 per person, you’re definitely touching upon the Vietnamese middle class.
Vinpearl is a great place for a families. It’s clean (the water park, anyway, if not the arcade) and reasonably safe. At the same time, I can’t recommend being there for more than 2 days, and I personally think one full day is more than plenty. Do be prepared for a lot of walking, however.
At Vinpearl you’ll have access to:
- Beach and Water Park: Waterslides! I love them. They are legit, not a ton, but a definite few worth going on, as well as kids/family slides. There’s also a small beach here, but it’s a bit rocky and uncomfortable to walk through.
- Rides: This is more county fair style, with carousels and generic spinners, nothing with tracks.
- Aquarium: I imagine that this aquarium is the best in Vietnam. It reminds me a lot of the one in Kuala Lumpur, Aquaria KLCC, which is quite nice. This along with the waterslides are the best parts of Vinpearl. Definitely cool for young kids, but wish people would stop tapping the glass.
- Restaurant: Thuy liked the food here as she’d been here before, but I did not end up eating here. There is a set dinner they have for less than $10 USD that sounded interesting, however.
- Arcades and 4D rides (3D + vibration): I like the arcades here, got to see a lot of newer and older games. There are a LOT of games, but there are a lot of people there playing as well. Part of the problem is that it’s completely free, which sounds good, but people have the tendency to hog machines as if free means "my personal machine as long as I want”. They also have 4D rides, which are small movie theaters that show various movies in 3D while you side in vibration enabled seats. If you’ve ever been on the Days of Thunder ride in Great America in Santa Clara (CA, USA), and imagine it with 3D that would be it. I didn’t go on the rides, but imagine it would have been cool.
See more pictures from my trip below or go straight to my gallery on Smugmug:
