Nha Trang Beach

Geography and extent

Nha Trang Beach runs along Tran Phu street on the western shore of Nha Trang Bay, which belongs to the Les Plus Belles Baies du Monde (The Most Beautiful Bays in the World) association^[1]. Wikidata gives its coordinates as 12.2502°N, 109.1968°E, matching English Wikipedia's own figure of 12°15'01"N 109°11'48"E^[1][7]. A reverse lookup of that point on OpenStreetMap places it on Tran Phu street itself, in the Phuoc Hoa area of Nha Trang ward^[8].

Sources measure the beach's length differently. Vietnam Tourism gives about 7 km, a figure English Wikipedia also cites, while VnExpress gives about 12 km for the wider "Tran Phu road beach"^[1]. Vietnamese Wikipedia gives a similar shorter figure, about 7 km, for the stretch specifically from Xom Con to Cau Da port^[2].

Since 1 July 2025 the beach has lain across two of the wards created when Nha Trang city was divided: Nha Trang ward and Bac Nha Trang ward, Thanh Nien reported in October 2025^[5][9].

History of the seafront

Under French rule the road beside the beach was named Avenue de la Plage, the beach avenue. The writer Quach Tan, quoted by the provincial paper Bao Khanh Hoa, recorded that colonial-era Nha Trang covered only a third of the area of the present city, and that the French lived along the seafront, from the Residence, now the administrative office, to the Grand Hotel^[3]. The road was later renamed Duy Tan, and then, by the early 1990s, Tran Phu, though it remained, in the paper's words, a fairly peaceful landscape road of hotels, offices and shops^[3].

The street was transformed from 1996, when the 13-storey Nha Trang Lodge overtook the 7-storey Nha Trang Hotel as the city's tallest building, and international chains, among them Novotel, Sheraton, Best Western and InterContinental, followed^[3]. By the time Bao Khanh Hoa wrote of it in February 2024, the street carried nearly 20 buildings of 40 storeys or more, besides many more of 30 to 40^[3]. In 2002 the Tran Phu bridge over the Cai River extended the road north as Pham Van Dong street, crossing the Vinh Luong pass to National Route 1 and turning the combined Tran Phu-Pham Van Dong road into a main north-south route through the city^[3].

The road between the hotels and the sand

Nha Trang city's People's Committee regulates a coastal park strip running from the Tran Hung Dao shrine to the park opposite Mai Xuan Thuong street, covering the pavements and the ground between them and the waterline, and governing sightseeing, recreation and service business there^[1].

In September 2023 Bao Khanh Hoa reported that the strip had been fitted with 7 free public water points, 6 underground public restrooms of about 80 m² each, 32 foot-washing stations at beach access points and 141 outdoor fitness stations, together with a short footpath at the park opposite the Yasaka Saigon Nha Trang hotel made from 32,000 recycled plastic bottles^[6].

The 2020s recovery plan

Khanh Hoa province has been recovering beachfront plots on the east side of Tran Phu street for public use. In 2024 it reclaimed 20,000 of the 28,000 m² it had leased to Sovico Khanh Hoa for the Ana Mandara resort; the company then demolished its buildings and returned the site, keeping what VietnamNet calls the remaining area, about 1,800 m², along the frontage for a restaurant and cafe^[4]. VietnamNet's three figures do not close: 28,000 m² less 20,000 m² leaves 8,000 m², not 1,800 m², and the report does not account for the difference^[4]. The former Phu Dong Park project, which had occupied over 21,700 m² of beachfront in the same way, was also required to give up its land, though the site remained undeveloped when VietnamNet reported on it in August 2025^[4].

In October 2025 Thanh Nien reported a further plan to convert 16.4 km of the Tran Phu-Pham Van Dong seafront, across Nha Trang and Bac Nha Trang wards, into 253 ha of park divided into four zones^[5].