VACATIONS FROM HOME: NHA TRANG, VIETNAM

WORLDS COLLIDE

NHA TRANG VIETNAM

Our next stop on our recent tour of Vietnam was the popular resort city of Nha Trang. A wide golden sand beach curves for miles along the South China Sea with strikingly beautiful islands in the distance. Palm trees line the promenade on glamourous Tran Phu Street which brims with upscale resorts and restaurants.

Vietnam was once an impoverished country, but Nha Trang shows how the government’s Doi Moi or renovation project is working and very well.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING

Nha Trang is very popular with Russian tourists for good reason.

From 1979 to 2002 first the Soviets and then the Russian Navy maintained their largest naval base outside the country in nearby Cam Ranh. Familiarity with this beautiful curving stretch of golden sand beach and inviting waters of the bay have Russian travel agencies booking packaged tours for their comrades.

NHA TRANG

Travel to Nha Trang took off after the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in the early 2010s. Those were once popular Russian vacation destinations, but that area’s instability had them shifting to Vietnam for travel. It’s easy for Russians to travel to Vietnam. They don’t need a visa to enter the country, unless they exceed 45 days, and now Nha Trang has become so popular with the Russians they boast their own “snowbirds”, preferring to winter in Nha Trang to avoid the brutal cold of the motherland.

WAIT! THERE’S MORE

Vietnam is also popular with the Chinese and South Koreans, lured by cheaper costs and better weather. The Chinese need a visa like US citizens that is good for 90 days, while South Korean nationals can visit Vietnam without a visa for 45 days.

Before the COVID pandemic and subsequent lockdowns up to 2,000 Chinese were flying in daily on package tours. Today it is about 25% of that number.

Blackpink, K-pop

Vietnam is popular with Koreans not only because the price and weather and the Korean food that can be ordered in restaurants, but also because extremely popular Korean K-pop groups, like Blackpink, perform there.

The Vietnamese also come to Nha Trang, although the prices here are a bit steeper than in other parts of the country.

There is the Vinwonders Water and Amusement Park on Hon Tre Island. To get there you take an aerial cable. There are plenty of beach activities in Nha Trang proper. Mostly the Vietnamese and Koreans are up very early and hit the beach before the day heats up and not wanting to get a suntan. White skin is more appealing to them and the Russians come later in the day. There is scuba diving and jet skis for hire. It all makes Nha Trang a very viable tourist destination.

WHAT’LL IT BE?

The influx of so many tourists from so many different countries has led to menus that are printed in several languages: Korean, Russian, English, Chinese and Vietnamese, so one doesn’t necessarily have to point at the pictures to order. Standard Vietnamese fare like Pho and Binh Mi are readily available throughout the city, which is renown for excellent seafood, but there are some Russian enclaves in Nha Trang that Cyrillic is all that is printed.

NHA TRANG

AMERICANS

To reach Nha Trang, our tour company, Overseas Adventure Tours (OAT), had us fly out of Da Nang (another resort town with high rise resorts and not far from Hoi An) to HCMC (Ho Chi Min City / Saigon) on Vietnam Airlines. We then transferred to another plane to reach the resort town. They were short flights, less than an hour for both, but we got Delta Frequent Flyer miles for flying on Vietnam Airlines. I know, there’s always some sort of angle with Vacations From Home.

VIETNAM AIRLINES

We stayed two nights at the Em ‘oi, a boutique hotel with a very expansive breakfast buffet. We didn’t have a view of the sea from our hotel room, but we could see the Long Son Pagoda where there’s a massive white Guatama Buddha statue on a nearby hill. According to the Guiness Book of World Records this is the largest Buddha statue in the world, so it wasn’t difficult to see.

EM 'OI HOTEL, NHA TRANG

EM 'OI HOTEL

We didn’t run into any Russians, Chinese or Koreans when we first arrived; we would run into them on our second day when several of us went to the beach and later that evening when we went out to dinner. Our first encounter with the many languages on a menu was right away though. After we stopped at a gleaming high rise shopping mall to withdraw some Dong (and become a millionaire again…2,000,000 VDN = $80.00USD) we got ice cream in the mall at Crazy Mango. Their various offerings like mango ice cream were listed in several languages. While still in this mall we stopped at a very busy and well-stocked supermarket for snacks and alcohol.

CRAZY MANGO, NHA TRANG

Dinner that first night was on OAT and we visited a very local Vietnamese restaurant that served us raw food like meat and calamari and vegetables that we would cook on charcoal braziers on our tables. This place definitely did not have a website.

NHA TRANG

The next day we saw more of local Vietnamese life by hopping on scooters for a tour of the city and the surrounding countryside. The scooters were all being commandeered by inhabitants of a village we would eventually visit. Before we left the city proper though we stopped at a Birdcage café. This is where men come with their birds in cages and they would hang them in the middle of what essentially was an empty lot and as the men sipped coffee and chatted, their “girlfriends” as our OAT guide called them also chatted between themselves. Presumably not in Russian.

The village elder was in the South Vietnamese air force and he and the rest of the citizens of this village were all sent here by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after enduring reeducation camps after the war. We drank a lot of rum infused drinks and had lunch as we were told the story of the elder and the villagers. Some of us ate duck embryos. Fertilized duck eggs with partially developed embryos are boiled and eaten from the shell. Janet tried eating it, but only got a bite or two. In Vietnam this “delicacy” is called Hot Vit Lon. Avoid, even if it offends your hosts.

YUM

Yes, I still kiss Janet.

PARTY ON

That night we first went to a craft beer hall on the beach. The Louisiane Brewhouse served respectable beers and had a full menu, but we were eating elsewhere. After a round of brews we walked over to the very posh Sailing Club.

Open and airy and steps from the beach this elegant place served great food at expensive prices and had a great mixed drink and wine list. The place was filled with lots of different nationalities, Koreans, Russians, and Chinese. The staff spoke perfect English. There was also a stage set on the beach with a band playing music and lots of people were dancing. No, we didn’t see any Russians dancing the Prisyadka, and not even a Mazurka or a polka, but there was a table that was taking hits on a water pipe. I declined an offer from a comrade who tried to wave me over speaking to me in Russian. I had to say Nyet.

LOUISIANE BREWHOUSE, NHA TRANG, VIETNAM

THE SAILING CLUB, NHA TRANG

Nha Trang is a lively place, and as was the case with every place we visited in Vietnam we wished we could have lingered there longer.

Sigh.

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