(For more information about these videos, see HERE)
I had a week off of work, and we decided to travel.
Initially, the wife was planning on going to Danang again, but when she found out I had never been to Nha Trang, she decided that we had to go there instead.
Nha Trang is a beach town in central Vietnam. It's one of the most popular tourist destinations in Vietnam--for years I had been listening to my friends talk about their trips to Nha Trang, or seeing their pictures on Facebook. So I guess it is kind of strange that after 8 years in Vietnam, I never made it to Nha Trang.
The wife did all the travel arrangements (as usual), so the plan was to spend 2 days in a cheap hotel to save money, and then 2 days in a nice resort.
We stayed at Melissa Hotel on the beach in Nha Trang city. Here is some video from the hotel, and from some of the beach next to the hotel.
Nha Trang Beach, Khánh Hòa province, Vietnam (view from Melissa hotel window, and from nearby beach)
I was a bit surprised by how overdeveloped the beach area of central Nha Trang was. For years I had been seeing pictures on Facebook from friends and co-workers that depicted Nha Trang as some sort of secluded tropical paradise. But I suppose those pictures were probably of resorts that were not in the center of Nha Trang.
Also, my wife, who had been to Nha Trang back in 2011, said that most of the tall hotels and skyscrapers that now lined the beach were not there back 12 years ago. So the city has been developing rapidly over the last few years. (And indeed, you could see construction sites everywhere. But then, that's true of most of Vietnam.)
On the first day of site-seeing, the first stop was Po Nagar Cham temple tower, which was a Cham temple from the days of the Cham empire. (It was in the Cham style, and so was similar to a lot of the temples I saw in Cambodia.) According to Wikipedia it was built sometime before 781.
Then, over to Hòn Chồng, which is apparently a tourist destination famous for its rock formations by the ocean.
And then over to Ana Marina Beach Club.
Then, the next day, it was off to the resort.
The resort was owned and operated by Vingroup, which is this huge conglomerate in Vietnam which owns everything from schools to hospitals to apartments to resorts to amusement parks. (See Wikipedia here.)
On our trip to Phu Quoc last year, we stayed at the Vingroup resorts in Phu Quoc, and I talked about how impressive (and slightly strange) everything was in my video narration. The resorts in Nha Trang were largely the same, so I won't go through that whole spiel again. Just see my earlier video. (The development in Phu Quoc is a bit more impressive, and a bit newer than the resorts in Nha Trang, so not exactly the same, but the same general idea.)
Vingroup operated a whole island just off the coast of Nha Trang. (My wife wasn't sure whether they bought it or leased it.) My wife said that there were 3 different resorts on the island, as well as the amusement park Vinwonders. We stayed at the cheapest of those 3 resorts.
Here's video of travelling to the resort, as well as the resort itself.
and here is the amusement park:
Playlist of the trip HERE:
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