Nha Trang is a beach destination on the South Central Coast of Vietnam. In this post you’ll read about our stay in this city.
Recently it has become a favorite destination among Chinese and Russian people. So a big part of the city is exclusively designed for tourism. Lots of hotels and rental apartments towers have been built just in front of the sea.
However, we found out that beach was not the best we’ve visited… Instead we discovered a foodie paradise with lots of sea food options.
Furthermore, we learned about Cham Culture as there is a site in the middle of the city. But our most interesting adventure was getting on a traing and visiting Po Klong Garai Cham Towers site. Keep reading to find out more about all this…
Table of Contents
1st Day in Nha Trang
Discovering Nha Trang
We arrived in Nha Trang. This time we took a bus to get from the airport to the accommodation. The ride was quite pleasant, all along the shore.
Nha Trang is a beach town, with thousands of apartment or hotel towers built on the seafront. And also a little further back.
This city is known for being a tourist destination for Russian and Chinese people, so most of the advertising is just written in Chinese or Russian. Out of the blue, you feel you’ve traveled to a different country.
As it happens, if you look like a western tourist, anyone who wants to talk to you on the street will do so in Russian. It was very funny to see how some people reacted when they realized that we had no clue of what they were saying.
Our accommodation in Nha Trang
Our accommodation was an apartment on the 29th floor of a building located right in front of the sea. It housed a hotel and temporary rental apartments.
It’s actually a 40-story building: up to the 26th floor a 4-star hotel runs and the rest of the floors accommodate temporary rental apartments. It was a very cheap offer that we had found on Booking.
The apartment facilities were very good, good air conditioning, big and comfortable bed, amazing views.
The only but huge problem the department had was that it smelled awfully.
The smell of fried fish had permeated throughout the apartment. We left every door and window open, the A/C on, we did everything we could and yet, the smell never went away during our whole stay. We don’t really think it will go away at all. This awful smell even came from the kitchen sink.
After having rested a bit while waiting for the sun to go down, we went to the beach for a moment. We had obvioulsy learned from our (short) experience in Da Nang.
However, we have to say that going to the beach in Nha Trang was something different .
Nha Trang beaches, a totally different experience.
The beach is wide, it has a promenade for walking, and from the coast you can see an island where a theme park works. It’s also nice to see, at night, the light shows played on the buildings by the seafront.
Once again, there were tons of people on the beach after 5pm.
But far from what we had seen in Da Nang, in Nha Trang everything is extremely dirty. There are plastic bottles and packages everywhere. And when you go into the sea, it’s unlikely anything doesn’t get tangled up on you.
Fortunately, we found Nha Trang weather a bit more friendly. There was a breeze on the beach and the heat was not as stifling as in our previous destinations.
Of course, it’s clear that no one there wanted to sunburn.
During daylight hours there is no one on the beach and all the passersby you see walking around are completely covered from head to toe. So that no ray of sunlight could reach their skin.
Coming back to the appartment
After a while on the beach, we went back to the apartment to take a shower and go to dinner.
But before that, we had to queue to take the elevator on the ground-floor hall, where most of the people waiting with us were dripping water.
As we mentioned earlier in our Da Nang experience post, many people go into the sea dressed as they come (perhaps with a jean) and thus return to their accommodations.
It is impossible to dry off in the few meters that separate the beach from the hotel, so everyone leaves their traces of water.
Nha Trang foodie experience
The places to eat around our apartment didn’t really draw our attention. They were just for tourists, and we were looking for a more local experience.
Luckily, we found a blog with food recommendations made by a local.
Following these recommendations, we moved away from the tourist area and visited a part of the city where no tourists were seen. Happily, we ended up eating in an amazing place.
It was a street food stand, with its typical mini tables placed one next to the other, making up a large shared table.
A group of women cooked a kind of rice flour cake in an iron mold, which could have squid or prawns or eggs, etc. on top.
If you have the chance to try the Banh Can, do not miss the opportunity. You will not regret it.
We also saw several people having a green drink, so we ordered one as well. From what we could understand, it was centella asiatica (Indian pennywort) juice.
The place was full and people kept arriving. All local people, it is worth mentioning. So, when you finish your meal, the waiter brings the check in hand, implicitly asking you to leave … Thus new diners could sit down and enjoy their meal, making the best of the opening hours for everyone.
It was a wonderful experience, everything was delicious. We were extremely happy that we had found that place.
2nd Day in Nha Trang
Already on our second day, we felt that Nha Trang didn’t have much to offer us. So we started researching on destinations to visit outside the city.
We found that, two hours away by train, there was a place called Po Klong Garai, where there were some Cham towers from the thirteenth century.
We had actually read something about that archeoligical site before, but it seemed too hard to get there. So at first, we had quickly quitted the plan. When we didn’t find Nha Trang so appealing, we changed our mind. The plan seemed now perfect for us so we set off.
The train that would take us there goes through Vietnam from North to South, so there are passengers who spend 36 hours traveling.
Traveling by train in Vietnam
Already getting on the train was defintely something different. One expects the train to arrive to the platform, not that it stops in between tracks and let alone that the people gets off the platform, go down by the tracks to get on the train…
And yet we kept on learning that there are other ways of living life.
For example, even though our train tickets had assigned seats, as soon as we got on, we understood it was insignificant. So we sat on the seats we found available.
Besides, the landscapes that we saw through the train window were impressive.
Po Klong Garai Cham Towers
We finally arrived at Phan Rang – Tháp Chàm, a very small train station in a small village. Then, following our GPS we reached the Po Klong Garai Cham towers.
They are located on a hill and there was no one around. They were small and quite unkempt. The place seemed a bit abandoned. We took some pictures and that was everything.
There is also a little museum interesting to see, the ticket to visit the museum is included in the ticket to visit the Cham Towers.
Po Klong Garai Experience
Our return ticket was around 5 pm, and it was only around 2 pm, so we thought about going for a walk around the village.
We wanted to eat something, but it was already late and there was no food stall so we just had some sugar cane juice and some smoothies.
Everything was ridiculously cheap for us … we had already been paying very cheap prices but this was unbelievable.
In that town everything costed half the cheapest price we had found so far.
We toured the area and found it super interesting. Very quiet, very few people on the street, almost zero traffic, mango trees and exotic fruits on the street and just low-rise houses.
It was clear visitors didn’t come frequently to this town. We soon became a kind of attraction for the local people.
People leaned out of the windows to say “Hello” to us, mothers called their children who were out there playing so that they could see us and say “hello” to us.
Probably the most bizarre moment was this one: we were passing by a house and a nanny who had a baby in her arms offered the baby to us while shouting “hello!”
It was a very strange experience for us, really. We could just compare this episode with those moments that can be seen in the Vatican, when the Pope is in St. Peter’s Square and people offer him children to be kissed and blessed.
Back in Nha Trang's beaches
When we returned from our excursion, we decided to go to the beach for a while to enjoy the breeze, since we only had to cross the street.
It was 6:50 p.m., it had already been dark for long and the beach was just crowded. It kept calling our attention with how many clothes they got into the sea.
And we also believe that they must have be shocked by the fact that we were wearing swimming suits, because they would not stop staring at us.
We saw many guys who only took off their shoes to go into the sea. They just walked in the sea with socks, jeans, leather belt and shirt.
Most women got in the sea with long dresses with sleeves. Just younger women may have dared to wear shorts to get into the water.
For us, the most bizarre moment happened when we saw some girls wetting their feet on the shore with their shoes on, shoes with heels that actually didn’t allow them to walk on the sand.
Another thing that caught our attention is that many adults used life jackets like children, despite the fact that the sea was not rough and that they would only wade waist deep into the sea.
For dinner, we went to the same place we had visited the day before. Well, we still had to try some other Banh Can, those rice flour cakes.
3rd Day in Nha Trang
Po Nagar Cham Towers
After breakfast, obviously a Pho, followed by a cup of good vietnamese coffee, we felt ready for touring around. We’d head to Po Nagar Cham Towers. This time, we didn’t have to leave Nha Trang.
The Po Nagar towers were better preserved than those we had visited the day before and the site was packed with tourists.
In fact, the place was very well prepared to receive tourists. There was a little museum, shows, a souvenir shop and everything you may find in a tourist place.
We took advantage of the fact that there was a public bathroom, something that is not so easy to find.
Every time we had the opportunity to use a bathroom, we did it, since drinking water and isotonic drinks all day long had its consequences.
The towers were also located on a hill. Furthermore, the views from there were stunning.
It was very hot, but the place was large and there were some benches where you could rest for a moment in the shade.
Looking for more local specialties
We knew that on our way back we were going to pass by one of the places mentioned in the food post we had read and we did not want to miss the chance to try new dishes.
The specialty of the house were grill pork meat. The famous Nem Nuong.
For our walk back we decided to explore the city instead of walking by the shore. Just to see something different.
For our dinner we wanted to try some of the blog’s recommendations, but we couldn’t find the places open. Anyway, this wasn’t a problem because we ended up having dinner at our already favorite place. We were becoming fans of those Banh Can.
Repeating the menu wasn’t a problem for us, since we didn’t know if we were ever going to be able to taste them again.
4th Day in Nha Trang
An interesting but plastic experience
During our last hours in Nha Trang, we felt like leaving the city. Nha Trang is a very touristy place.
If you want to immerse yourself in the local culture you have to get away from the beach. It’s pretty good, especially considering you could find better food options and more traditional cafes. We’re super happy about everything we’ve eaten there.
And we’ll always remember our trip to Po Klong Garai. It felt like an authentic adventure, nothing to do with our experience in Nha Trang, where everything seemed a bit contrived.
Our next destination was beautiful Hoi An. To get there we took a plane to Da Nang and from there a van would take us to Hoi An.
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