One of the attractions of heading to Nha Trang was the fact it was on the coast and therefore had a beach and it should also theoretically be warmer as we were heading further South in Vietnam.
There was a beach and it was beautiful, although with the haze that hangs over almost all of Vietnam (Da Lat was about the only noticeable place that you could see blue skies most of the time) it didn’t look as good as it would have if the sun had been shining.
There isn’t that much to do in Nha Trang other than relax and go for a swim if it’s warm enough. But there is a Temple. Of course there is 😉 It is a little bit of a walk out of the city centre but it wasn’t too strenuous to walk there so grab a map and head out.
Be aware that there are steps to walk up, the reviews online made it sound like there were a lot of them and it would be quite difficult. It’s seriously not that bad, if you managed the walk from town you will be fine.
Halfway up there is the sleeping budda, who is massive! There is an identical one that is Gold (plated or just coloured I would imagine) in Thailand as well.
You will no doubt think it’s nice and peaceful here and be surprised that no-one has tried to sell you anything yet. Just wait, if the people selling incense and other offerings haven’t tried to sell to you yet there will be people selling postcards.
Which admittedly are gorgeous and could be a good souvenir to put in photo albums when you get home because let’s face it, unless your an amazing photographer the pictures are going to depict a landscape a lot better than you can capture with your point and shoot camera.
Overall it was well worth the walk to find this temple and the two Budda’s. Oh and if you get super thirsty from the walk up the stairs there are more people selling up the top and you’ll be able to grab yourself a nice cold beverage.
Another little trip we did during our stay in Nha Trang was to some more Champa ruins. We hired bicycles (oh they were super crappy but nice and cheap, my stand kept on falling down while we were biking along. I got good at kicking it up while still on my bike, otherwise we may still be in Nha Trang biking back to our hotel.) to head out to the ruins. The first people we came across hiring out bikes were trying to hire them out for some ridiculous amount of money so we kept walking down the street another couple of blocks and found someone with more realistic prices. I can’t remember exact prices and I know they were more expensive than in Hoi An so maybe a few dollars each.
The Champa ruins are nice and peaceful inside with no-one trying to sell you anything, that goes with paying an entry fee which from memory was reasonable. A lot of the complaints for this tourist spot was that you can tell the ruins have been rebuilt – which is true, however I didn’t see what the big deal was. They were an incredible feat to be made back in those days and are still worth trekking out there.
You also get a really good view back over the harbour which is nice and the cute little boats that are all painted blue.
Another tip, if your hungry would be to get dinner over this side of the bridge, I saw Pho’s advertised for 15,000VND, we had been paying 20-30k which we thought was cheap!
On the way back we stopped at the Nha Trang centre where we found our first ever supermarket in Vietnam.
Nha Trang is heavily populated by Russians and I believe this is where a lot of them shop as there were not that many Vietnamese in there. It was nice to go in to the air conditioned centre and have some dinner. We also found the timeout style arcade centre and naturally brought some tokens and played some games before cycling back to our hotel.
Next up we head to Da Lat.
If you want to read more about our Vietnam Adventure please see these posts:
I just came back from my holiday in Vietnam about 3 weeks ago! Seeing your photos brings back so many good memories. Looks like we visited nearly all the same places too 🙂
It’s such a lovely place to visit! Where was your favourite place?