Three days in Nha Trang: a resort town that never stopped being a Vietnamese city

The Cai river splits the city in two and does most of the work of organising a visit. South of it is the beach, the promenade, the hotels and the compact old centre around the cathedral and the market. North of it is the fishing quarter, the Cham towers on their hill, the hot springs a little way up the valley and a headland of boulders at Hon Chong. One day each side is the natural division.

It is a bigger place than the beach suggests, and not a pretty one away from the water. The pleasure of the town is in the ordinary bits: the market at breakfast time, the streets of small eateries behind it, the fishing boats moored in the river below the towers. Nobody puts those in a brochure and they are the reason the city is better than its reputation.

The one thing to be firm about is timing. Nha Trang rewards early starts more than almost anywhere else on this coast, because the heat is serious by ten and every good thing here, the swim, the market, the towers, happens better before it.

Cam Ranh International Airport is about forty five minutes south of the city, built on the grounds of an American airbase and opened to civil traffic in 2004. Domestic flights come in from Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hanoi and Haiphong all day and cost very little if booked ahead. Taxis charge a fixed rate into town, and the airport buses that wait outside the terminal do the same run in about fifty minutes for a fraction of it, stopping at the larger hotels on the beach road.

The north to south railway stops here, which makes Nha Trang the easy overnight out of Ho Chi Minh City: get on after dinner, wake up on the coast. Northbound it is a long day to Da Nang. Sleeper buses cover the same routes for less and are the standard backpacker option, including the winding climb up to Da Lat, which has no working railway of its own.

The station and the airport road both put you a short taxi ride from the beach, so there is no advantage in booking a hotel by either.

The tourist infrastructure is not spread evenly along the front. The southern end, roughly from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai down towards the old airport, is where the dive schools, tour agencies and Western bars are. The middle belongs to the international chain hotels. Everything else, including the smaller beach north of the river, is aimed at Vietnamese holidaymakers and is cheaper and quieter for it.

Anywhere within a few streets of Tran Phu works, and a room a block or two back rather than on the front usually costs noticeably less for a walk of a couple of minutes.

The centre is small enough to walk: the cathedral, the museums and the market are all within a kilometre of one another, and the beach promenade is the pleasantest way to move north to south.

Everything across the river needs wheels. City buses are cheap and genuinely useful here, and route 4 runs past the Cham towers, which is the one worth knowing. Taxis and ride hailing apps are inexpensive for the same trip. Renting a motorbike is the usual choice for the waterfalls and beaches further out, with the usual caveat that Vietnamese traffic is not the place to learn.

Vietnamese swim at sunrise and again in the late afternoon, and stay out of the sun in between. Copy them. The middle of the day on Nha Trang beach is hot, hard-lit and largely given over to sunbathing Russians, and the water and the promenade are both far better at seven in the morning.

The sand is broad and clean and the water is calm, but it shelves quickly, so it goes over your head sooner than you expect. Vendors walk the sand selling fruit and hot steamed shellfish, and both are good.

Weather makes or breaks this. From roughly February to August the sea is flat and clear. The rain arrives late in the year, around October and November, and a grey week turns the whole thing into brown water and empty deckchairs. If your dates are in the autumn, plan on the towers and the mud baths carrying the trip.

Nha Trang is where Vietnamese diving is based, and the reefs are out at the islands rather than off the city beach. Hon Mun is the protected one and the usual destination for both diving and snorkelling day boats, which leave from the harbour in the morning and are back by late afternoon.

Set expectations sensibly: this is warm, easy, shallow diving with decent fish life, not the Philippines. Visibility is best in the same dry months that make the beach worth using.

Two things to eat before you leave. Banh can are small rice pancakes cooked in a clay mould over charcoal, served in stacks with fish sauce, herbs and often a spoonful of mango salad, and they cost almost nothing at the family places a few streets back from the front. The other is grilled beef: this is a city that eats around a tabletop barbecue.

Seafood is everywhere and mostly good. The rule that holds in Nha Trang is the same one that holds everywhere on this coast, which is to eat where there are Vietnamese families rather than where there is a photograph of the dish.

Petty theft is a real problem here, more so than in most Vietnamese cities. Bag snatching happens on the beach in daylight, so take nothing to the sand you would mind losing, and pickpocketing after midnight around the late bars at the southern end is common enough to be predictable.

The specific scam worth knowing about targets men walking back alone from the bars in the early hours: a friendly approach by two or three women, a great deal of contact, and a wallet and phone gone before you have noticed. Take a taxi rather than a motorbike home late. At the pagoda, ignore anyone in student clothes collecting donations for the temple school, because entry is free and they are not from it.