Nha Trang is situated on the southern central coast of Vietnam. It is well known for its beaches and surrounding islands. A promenade stretches along the main beach. The towns economy relies heavily on tourism and it has become a popular destination for both local and international tourists.

Our Trip

Nha Trang was one of the places we were really hoping we’d love given that a number of friends had mentioned it to us as a ‘must go’ destination. The ride into town was along a beautiful coast road so we were feeling very optimistic that we’d love it – in our mind it was going to be a beautiful quaint seaside town with a handful of seafood restaurants and bars… Sadly we were way off track as when we arrived and drove around we found that it is more like a huge busy tourist hub with myriad nightclubs, bars, hotels and restaurants – Vietnams answer to the Australian Gold Coast may be a good comparison, great for some people but not what we were hoping for.

Never the less we figured we may as well stay for a couple of nights so we booked ourselves in to Nha Trang Wonderland Hotel and despite some pretty useless bellboys (that managed to break Eddies light off his bike and were a bit too feeble to help with our bags!), we found the room was very modern and comfortable.

By the time we’d unpacked and showered up it was time for dinner, the weather was looking very dubious so we decided not to venture out too far and found a nice BBQ restaurant a few doors down from our hotel. There was an alfresco table available but we decided to sit in the main building with a decent roof. Soon after we finished our meal ‘the heavens opened’ and there was a torrential downpour of rain – within minutes everyone outside got drenched. The staff immediately jumped to attention and using a wheel attached to pulleys, reeled out a plastic canvas rooftop over the alfresco seats – it was quite eventful! We noticed the table we were going to sit on had a stream of water landing on it so we would have been drenched, a lucky escape! As we were rained in, we made a night of it and spent the evening watching the heavy storm pass and drinking local tap beer, pretty excellent.

Morning pool time

The next morning after breakfast we headed up to the Hotels rooftop pool and found that we had it all to ourselves, excellent! It was a pretty amazing pool with a great outlook over the town so we spent a couple of hours relaxing in the pool and sunbathing, bliss.

My wobbly panoramic of the rooftop pool!

Afternoon

We figured we better see a bit more of the town and so in the afternoon we rode around the main and back streets that were littered in bars, nightclubs and tourist shops. We only seemed to see Russian tourists, no locals or other nationalities.

It took us quite a long time to find a place for lunch – none of the restaurants seemed open. Sadly our best option turned out to be a bit disappointing as it had bad service, the food was way overpriced and portion sizes were small! (The trouble with these tourist hubs is that their industry relies on transient trade and they don’t need return custom – hopefully honest restaurant reviews on TripAdvisor will see this behaviour change. Rant over.) After lunch we spent the afternoon chilling in the hotel and watching movies, removing ourselves a little from the town!

Evening

Dinner was a lot better, instead of heading towards the main tourist area we turned away from it and walked north up alongside the beach. As we walked along we realised that is where the locals were eating. We passed a few modest local restaurants, a couple of small Vietnamese outdoor cinemas that were playing the news or cartoons, and some coffee houses. We walked for ten minutes or so before settling on a local restaurant where we ate fresh seafood and noodles, washed down with local beer. After dinner we walked back to the hotel, watched a movie and passed out!

Check-out

The next morning we had a late check out and after breakfast headed up to the pool where we spent an hour or so chilling in the cool water. We met a nice Australian family and chatted to them for a while about our travels. It was then time to make a move, pack up and ride over to Đà Lạt, Vietnams wine region.