About

We love the sea, and every few trips we end up back in Nha Trang

Review Nha Trang is about one city and nothing else.

You won't find Da Lat, Phu Quoc or Quy Nhon here, even though we like all three. This site is built around a single bay on Vietnam's south-central coast: the islands scattered offshore, the streets around Dam Market, early mornings on Tran Phu Beach, and the small eateries where locals stop for breakfast before the workday starts.

Everyone who writes here signs the same name: Tụi mình mê biển. In Vietnamese it means something like "we're crazy about the sea."

Behind that name is a small group of friends. We all have different jobs, and none of them are in tourism. The one thing we have in common is that whenever a few days off show up on the calendar, the group chat starts the same way:

“Beach trip?”

And oddly often, that conversation ends with a ticket to Nha Trang.

It started with an island tour that cost more than we planned

Our first trip to Nha Trang together went the way first trips to a beach town usually go.

There was a flyer for a four-island boat tour at the hotel front desk. The price sounded fine, so we booked it.

A van picked us up the next morning and dropped us at the harbor. We squeezed onto a crowded boat and spent the day drifting around the bay. The sky was clear, the water was blue, and we had a good time.

It was only that night, sitting in the hotel room adding up what we had spent, that we realized the day had cost almost twice what we had budgeted.

No single charge was huge.

It was just a little extra at every stop.

One beach had its own entrance ticket. Loungers were extra. Snorkel masks were extra. At lunch we ordered seafood without asking the price first, and when the bill arrived, the crab on our table turned out to be a lot "heavier" than it looked.

The next trip, we were more careful.

We asked prices before sitting down. We looked for places where locals were eating. We rented motorbikes instead of calling a car every time we wanted to head into town.

The trip after that taught us something else. We rode to the pier early one morning and found out the waves were too big that day, so no boats were allowed out.

We never made it to a single island. We spent the morning in a café watching whitecaps roll across the bay.

Not the plan, but it became one of the mornings we remember best.

After enough trips like that, we got into the habit of writing everything down.

• Which places were worth eating at.
• What time to show up at which beach.
• Which spots look great but aren't worth it at midday.
• Which tours spend far too long at a souvenir shop.
• How long the ride from the airport into town takes.
• How to reshuffle the plan when the sea turns rough.

At first it all lived in one shared note on somebody's phone.

Then friends heading to Nha Trang started asking for it.

One friend passed it to another. That person came back with more questions.

Eventually we thought:

Maybe we should just write this up properly.

That's how Review Nha Trang began.

There's no big startup story behind it. We just wanted the people coming after us to spend less time standing at a register with the same confused look we used to have.

Some lessons stick better when they cost you money

Travel enough and you notice that the small overcharges are the ones that keep repeating.

In Nha Trang, one of them is seafood sold by weight.

Shrimp, crab and shellfish are usually weighed live, and the price on the board is per kilogram, not per plate. The simple fix is to watch the scale and ask the price per kilo before you order. Most restaurants are perfectly fair about it - nothing goes wrong at the vast majority of them - but knowing the number first makes the whole meal more relaxed.

The second one is the island tour that's unusually cheap.

A full-day tour priced well below everyone else's isn't necessarily a bad tour. Before booking, though, we always ask whether the price covers island entrance fees, lunch, life jackets, loungers and water activities.

Five minutes of questions up front saves a lot of "wait, that's not included?" later in the day.

Then there's getting around.

Cam Ranh International Airport sits about 35 km south of downtown Nha Trang, roughly a 45-minute drive, so the airport transfer is usually the first real expense of the trip. In town, we like booking rides through apps such as Grab because you see the fare before you get in. If you rent a motorbike, walk around it and take a few photos before you accept the keys.

Small stuff, all of it.

But a smooth trip is usually made out of exactly this kind of small stuff.

Nha Trang the way we see it

Say "Nha Trang" and most people picture summer.

We tend to remember the city between March and May.

Some mornings the sea is so flat it looks like glass from the shore. The sun is up but not harsh yet, the water is clear, the sky is blue, and the summer crowds haven't arrived.

In the late afternoon, Tran Phu Beach still has enough open sand to spread out a towel and do absolutely nothing.

The rainy season shows you a different Nha Trang.

One thing that surprises a lot of international visitors: Nha Trang's wet season doesn't follow the rest of southern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City gets most of its rain from around May to October, while Nha Trang's rainy months run roughly September to December.

Some days the waves pound the shore white, the boats stay tied up in port, and every island plan gets crossed off. In exchange, the streets are quieter, rooms are easier on the budget, and sitting in a café watching rain sweep across the bay has its own appeal.

If you travel in that season, we only have one rule:

Don't pin the whole trip on one day out on the islands.

5 a.m. on Tran Phu Beach

If we could keep only one hour of the day in Nha Trang, we'd pick 5 a.m.

The beach isn't empty at that hour.

It's just busy in a completely different way from the rest of the day.

Older men and women do their exercises along the sidewalk. Groups of morning swimmers are already in the water while the sky is still pale. Joggers follow the seawall. Out past the bay, the sun slowly rises behind the islands.

The city isn't hot yet.
Traffic is light.
The sea is usually calm.

Swim for a while, and by the time you're back on the sand, the noodle stalls are opening.

It's one of the rhythms of Nha Trang we love most.

Breakfast usually starts with a bowl of noodles

Our breakfast routine isn't very adventurous.

It's usually bun cha ca or bun sua.

Bun cha ca is the city's signature breakfast: rice noodles in a clear broth made from sea fish, topped with slices of fried fish cake. Bun sua is the same idea with jellyfish added, which is crunchier than most people expect.

A small table, low plastic stools, a bowl of clear broth, a few slices of golden fish cake, a plate of fresh herbs on the side.

On mornings when we sleep in a little, it turns into banh can instead - small rice-flour cakes lifted straight out of clay molds, still hot, topped with scallion oil and dipped into a bowl of fish sauce.

If you've never ordered at a street stall, don't worry. Pointing at what the next table is eating works fine, and you usually pay on the way out.

It doesn't have to be a fancy meal.

Some dishes taste best in the right city, on the right morning, in exactly that kind of setting.

If you're not sure where to start, we've collected the places we keep going back to, what they charge and what to order in our guide to what to eat in Nha Trang.

The places we keep going back to, no photo op required

After a few trips, a city stops being a list of "10 places you have to see."

You remember it by a handful of familiar corners.

For us, one of them is Xom Bong Bridge (Cầu Xóm Bóng) in the late afternoon, looking down at the fishing boats packed tight on the Cai River.

Another is the Po Nagar Cham Towers (Tháp Bà Po Nagar) just across the river, a cluster of centuries-old brick temples built by the Cham people. We usually go early, because the midday sun up there is fierce.

There's Hon Chong (Hòn Chồng), a pile of boulders at the edge of the sea where, every time we visit, someone is standing for ages just looking out over the bay.

And there's Dam Market (Chợ Đầm), where we usually pick up some sun-dried squid or dried fish to take home, asking prices as we go out of pure habit.

But the Nha Trang we know isn't only blue water and pretty photos.

In peak season, the beachfront can get very crowded and loud. High-rise hotels block the sea view along some stretches. Some island tours still cram as many stops as possible into one day, so you barely get in the water before it's time to climb back on the boat.

We write about those things too.

Not to knock Nha Trang.

Knowing both the good and the not-so-good about a place helps you choose the version of it that suits you.

What you'll find on Review Nha Trang

We've split the site into a few sections, roughly the way a trip comes together.

It usually starts with one question:

“The beach, or somewhere else?”

Islands & beaches

This is the section we spend the most time keeping current.

Things change fast out on the water: conservation rules, where you're allowed to swim or snorkel, boat schedules, weather, and whether an island is taking visitors at all. Snorkeling and diving at Hon Mun, for example, have been suspended since June 2022, and tours to Binh Ba island stopped in June 2026.

That's why we don't treat articles like Nha Trang island hopping as finished. When something important changes, the article gets updated.

Places

Places is for the days you don't feel like getting on a boat.

It covers spots in town, around the bay, and places you can string together into a half-day or full-day plan.

If you just want a list to get started, see things to do in Nha Trang.

Food

Food is the section we argue about most.

Which place is good. Which place is good but has a long wait. Which dish is a morning thing. Which dish gets noticeably pricier once the crowds arrive.

We try to note the price we paid when we visited, so you get a reference point instead of a vague "reasonably priced."

Weather

"What's the best month to go to Nha Trang?" is probably the question we hear most.

The Weather section covers the rainy and dry seasons, waves, wind, and the ways weather can reshape a beach trip.

For the short answer, start with the best time to visit Nha Trang.

Guides

Guides is the least romantic section and often the most useful one before you fly.

How to get from Cam Ranh airport into town, which part of the city to stay in, roughly what a trip costs, how many days feels right.

If this is your first time in the city, the Nha Trang travel guide is the page we'd open first.

Who is this site for?

First of all, people who like to plan their own trips.

You book your own flights. You pick your own hotel. You decide whether tomorrow is an island day or an extra hour of sleep followed by a bowl of noodles.

You don't need to know anything about Nha Trang before reading. In our guides we try to cover even the very basic stuff: which pier the boats leave from, how long the ride takes, whether to call a car or take the bus, what to pack before an island day.

The site is also for families traveling with young kids.

Small children change every question about a trip.

• Which beach has shallower water?
• How long is the boat ride?
• Is there any shade?
• Does the restaurant have room to move around?
• Is the food spicy?

When we know, we point out which spots work well for young kids and which don't, so parents don't have to guess.

And Review Nha Trang has a version for international travelers - the one you're reading.

The English site isn't translated line by line from the Vietnamese. We rewrite it for someone landing in Vietnam for the first time, and explain things Vietnamese readers take for granted: how paying at a street stall works, what a red flag on the beach means, why your boat might stay in port when the sea is closed for the day.

And if you're from Nha Trang and you've read this far, we especially want to hear from you.

An alley we haven't found yet. A long-running local spot where we got the opening hours wrong. A story about the city that outsiders rarely get to see.

Emails like that mean more to us than any ranking.

How do we keep articles from going stale?

A tourist city changes faster than most people think.

• Ticket prices change.
• A restaurant moves.
• A pier changes its rules.
• An attraction closes for a while.
• The beach season arrives earlier or later than usual.

That's why every article on Review Nha Trang shows the date it was last updated.

Most of our topics come from questions people ask again and again, from the searches about Nha Trang that keep trending, and from the things most likely to change on a trip here.

How we check information, cite sources, use photos and fix mistakes is written up separately on our Editorial policy page.

Not every article on the site is perfect.

But when we find out where we got something wrong, that's where we fix it.

Two small tools that came out of our group chat

The question we hear most turned out not to be "Where should we eat?" or "Where should we stay?" It's this one:

“Will the sea be nice tomorrow?”

A calm day or a rough one can completely change the plans of someone about to head out to the islands.

Every time someone asked, we used to open several apps, check wind, waves and rain, and piece the numbers together ourselves.

So we built Is Nha Trang's sea nice today?

The widget pulls together hourly wave, wind, rain and UV data and gives you a rough score from 0 to 10 for a quick look.

It doesn't replace safety notices.

If there's a warning flag on the beach, if lifeguards tell you to stay out of the water, or if the authorities have closed the sea, that always matters more than any number on a screen.

The other tool started from something much less serious.

One day the whole group got into an argument about which island to visit.

One of us wanted Hon Tam and a lounger all day. Another was set on finding a sandbar. The third didn't care about the scenery at all and only asked, "Where's the good food?"

After a while, nobody was budging.

So we built a six-question island quiz.

The quiz is mostly for fun, but we try to keep the information for each island practical: how to get there, what it's like, what to watch out for, and whether it's currently taking visitors.

A few things Review Nha Trang doesn't do

We don't sell tours, take hotel bookings or act as a ticket agent.

Review Nha Trang is simply a site that writes about Nha Trang.

If someone contacts you claiming to be "from Review Nha Trang" to sell you a tour or ask for a bank transfer, that person is not us.

The site isn't an official source for weather or sea safety either.

On days with storms, rough seas or restrictions on boats heading out, follow the announcements from the authorities and the local rescue teams first.

Some days, the best plan is to stay off the water.

Nha Trang still has plenty to do on dry land.

If you know a different Nha Trang, tell us

Nha Trang changes faster than a small group like ours can write.

• A favorite spot closes.
• An address moves to another street.
• Ticket prices go up after one season.
• A quiet place suddenly gets busy.

So emails like these:

• “That place has moved.”
• “The ticket price is different now.”
• “This spot is better in the morning.”

…are the ones we most like getting.

You can also send us a question before your trip, tell us about a great meal or one that went wrong, or just describe a lovely morning you had in Nha Trang.

Write to us at [email protected].

For other ways to reach us, see the Contact page.

Thanks for stopping by Review Nha Trang. Maybe one of these mornings we'll run into each other on Tran Phu Beach at 5 a.m., just as the city wakes up and the sun comes up over the bay.