Nha Trang with kids: is this the one place to skip on your Vietnam trip?

One of our favourite stages of any trip comes right at the beginning, when we carefully unfold a paper map and start plotting a route. Armed with sticky red dots, Post-it notes, guide books and marker pens, the planning begins and the journey slowly comes to life. At first glance, the long narrow shape of Vietnam takes some of the mystery out of route planning. The main road and rail options all follow a slender slice of land between the coast and the mountainous border with Cambodia and Laos.

This well-trodden tourist trail means several stops have become established on everyone’s itinerary and it’s tempting to fold the map away and follow the crowd. Perhaps it’s for this reason that we stopped in Nha Trang and we’re still unsure if it was a mistake or not.

Don’t get us wrong, Nha Trang has plenty going for it and many families have a great time exploring the beaches, islands and theme parks. But for us, it didn’t push the right buttons. We’ll share with you some of the challenges we faced and try to work out if Nha Trang with kids is worth a visit, or should this be one place you skip on your Vietnam adventure?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click to purchase, it is at no additional cost to you, and I receive a small commission.

Contents

Why does everyone else seem to love it?

We’re clearly in the minority here because Nha Trang is popular, popular, popular. From a distance (or from an Instagram reel) it looks like your quintessential tropical beach resort. Long stretches of sandy beach, restaurants and bars, island tours and a huge theme park would suggest your family will never want to leave.

If you’re in a certain type of mood, or in need of a certain type of family holiday, there’s no doubt you’ll find enough to do. A popular activity is to book onto a tour and head out to the islands at Hong Tam, Hong Mieu or Hon Mun. From there, you can do some snorkelling, visit fishing villages or take a dip in the mud baths. Be warned though: these tours are exceptionally popular and not the relaxed, authentic experience you might be expecting. The waters are filled with jellyfish, so snorkelling isn’t really recommended (although the tour guides don’t mention this at time of booking).

An undisputed highlight of Nha Trang is the beach, especially the main section (simply known as Nha Trang Beach) which is a deep, wide golden stretch, right in the centre of town. It’s popular with local and international tourists but it’s usually possible to find a quiet section, particularly as you get towards the northern edge. This is an ideal place to bring a football and let the kids run around to burn off some energy. Once you cross Tran Phu Bridge and reach Hon Chong Beach, it becomes narrower and more prone to rubbish being washed up.

Nha Trang is well connected to the rest of Vietnam, and is an important stop on the North-South railway line that links Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. We had spent a few days in Dalat (including an incredible motorbike day trip) and Nha Trang was the closest major town for us to reach on the sleeper bus.

If you decide to skip Dalat and Mui Ne, it’s the first major stop from Saigon when travelling northwards. The journey on the sleeper train takes about eight hours, but be warned the overnight one arrives into Nha Trang at 5:30am. Once you’ve finished in Nha Trang, there’s a handy overnight sleeper train to Danang which is only a stone’s throw away from Hoi An, and the next leg on the standard itinerary.

The city is also home to one of Vietnam’s largest theme parks, but 75% of our family really weren’t fans of Vinpearl Nha Trang, see below for all the gory details.

Why didn’t we get that same vibe?

We wanted to like Nha Trang but we never felt like it met us halfway. Each time we attempted an activity or an excursion, something seemed to come between us.

To begin with, Nha Trang is packed full of tourists and it didn’t feel like our sort of crowd. We were used to large numbers of tourists in Vietnam, and places such as Saigon, Hanoi, Phong Nha and Sapa are often full with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, European and domestic tourists.

In Nha Trang though, the makeup of the tourists seemed different and the independent, friendly vibe we’d noticed elsewhere was missing. On a side note, Russians make up the majority of foreigners in Nha Trang, although some are apparently living here long-term. It’s common to hear Russian spoken and people will assume you’re Russian if you have blonde hair.

Nha Trang is tour-group central so, if you’re a family used to travelling independently, it can be frustrating to find groups of people everywhere you go. In the busier parts of town, tour buses line the streets waiting to collect their customers, and it’s common to arrive somewhere and find the car park full of buses. The majority of visitors here seem to be older Chinese or Korean tour groups and young, independent Russians.

The main thoroughfare in town is set back from the beach, with a wide promenade separating the road from the sand. Lining this road are scores of hotels, nightclubs, bars and restaurants, so you’re never short of places to eat, including local and Western options, but noise can be an issue. There’s also a shiny new mall with fast-food joints and designer shops. Once you step back from the main road, the rest of the town is fairly nondescript with little to recommend it, unless you’re looking for midrange hotels, coffee houses and electrical shops.

After the first day we were slightly at a loss. We still had a couple of days left before our pre-booked sleeper train to Danang and needed to find something to fill the time. We considered booking one of the tours to the nearby islands but couldn’t face the huge crowds and knew we wouldn’t be getting a pristine experience. From a distance, the snorkelling looked tempting, but fellow travellers had warned about the swarms of jellyfish which made it next to impossible to relax in the water. So we scratched that off our list of to-do items.

All that remained was the Vinpearl Theme Park and it felt like a safe bet.

The disappointment of Vinpearl Theme Park

Visible from everywhere in Nha Trang, the theme park is set on an island and looks spectacular, enhanced by the dramatic cable car you use to reach the entrance. After treble checking our maths (yes it really was £116 for a family of four), we decided to take the plunge and buy tickets. Our youngest is a theme park aficionado and he’d never have let us leave Nha Trang without visiting.

Oh my, what a disappointment. From the moment we arrived, the disorganised queues and complex ticket buying process should have warned us this was going to be a let-down. Admittedly, we were visiting on a weekend (apparently it’s quieter on a weekday) but it still took us ages to navigate the queues and reach the theme park itself.

We just didn’t like it at all. The rides were incredible tame by international standards, mainly consisting of carousels, chair swings and a fairly bland Runaway Train. The supposed highlight was a mountain coaster which had a two-hour queue. Surely this one would be worth the admission fee? No, not at all. Almost zero excitement.

Elsewhere in the park, there’s an animal area, gardens and huge Ferris Wheel which we actually quite enjoyed, partly because it had no queue. The views from the top are perfect and you get to gaze out over Nha Trang, the mountains and the sea.

We saved some time at the end for the waterpark but it too was heaving with visitors, with long queues for the under-inflated rings and the dull rides you used them on. Any of the decent(ish) rides were inaccessible to our boys due to the 1.5m height restriction. One saving grace was the water obstacle course that the boys enjoyed and this at least meant we managed to stay until the park began to close.

Our youngest did enjoy himself and told us it was ‘quite fun’. But, considering how much he loves theme parks, this was slightly faint praise. The rest of us thought it was bad, bordering on terrible, and the extortionate price is in no way justified. This is international level pricing, what you’d expect to pay for Alton Towers in the UK, or Legoland in Malaysia, both of which are far superior.

So yeah, we didn’t love it. Perhaps if you’re visiting with kids aged under seven you might have more luck, but definitely give it a miss if you have older kids.

Would we recommend you visit Nha Trang then?

Maybe.

The distances in Vietnam can be deceptive and Nha Trang is a useful stopping-off point on your way north to Danang, or south towards Dalat or Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). If you just spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach and enjoying the restaurant and bar scene, it’s a nice place to be.

If the budget allows, it’s a good place to splurge on a luxury hotel if you fancy a break from backpacking or budget travel.

Having said all that, if you do decide to skip Nha Trang, we don’t think you’re missing out on much and Vietnam has plenty of other places to visit which are more worthy of your time.

Nha Trang Railway Station — *Nha Trang railway station*

Where we stayed in Nha Trang with kids

We split our time in Nha Trang with some cheap accommodation, The MCR Luxury Nha Trang (please ignore the ‘luxury’ in the title, it’s doing some very heavy lifting; it really was a place just to sleep as we were out all day at VinWonders) and a sprinkling of luxury at The Intercontinental Residences Nha Trang, where we enjoyed the clean and spacious apartment, washing machine, and decent WIFI.

In fact, we barely left the apartment at The Intercontinental as we weren’t too bothered about seeing any more of Nha Trang. So we spent our couple of days here as a reset; catching up on washing, a bit of work, relaxing with TV and a pizza takeaway, and enjoying a good shower. It was just what we needed a few weeks into our Vietnam backpacking trip.

Final thoughts on Nha Trang with kids

There are some places you fall in love with, and others not so much. On paper, Nha Trang should have suited us and been a highlight of our time in Vietnam but there was something about it that didn’t click.

It definitely felt busy with other tourists and less capable of handling the numbers. We loved escaping to the luxury of the Intercontinental Residences but this was a bubble away from reality. The rest of the accommodation options seemed slightly tired and/or expensive and the less said about the theme park the better. Many travelling families do end up having a good time in Nha Trang and there’s no doubt the beach is impressive, especially later in the afternoon when the numbers and temperature drop.

So what’s the verdict? Well, if we had our time again and were plotting our route on that paper map, we’d probably put a cross through Nha Trang and focus our time on some of the other amazing places Vietnam has to offer further north. It wasn’t for us, but that’s not to say Nha Trang isn’t for you.