Mui Ne and Cam Ranh: Sea, Two Paths
With a coastline that runs along its eastern border, Vietnam is like a beach break, with the best options on the south-central coast. For an easy beach escape (no need to fly), there’s the remote coastal town of Mui Ne, just a two-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, served by the beautiful new highway CT01, which opened in April 2023. For public transport. , there are public buses available for around $10, and private transfers around $100 (cars and drivers are easily arranged through your hotel). The drive is an absolute delight, through the rubber plantations and red dragon fruit farms that the area is known for.
Mui Ne is not only accessible, but also has some of the best conditions, with the biggest days of sunshine in the year in Vietnam and swimming conditions all year round (also, it is known around the world as a place for kite surfing). The most luxurious residence is Anam Mui Ne, a tropical Indochine dream of coffee-colored tea, forest-inspired landscaping, and decorative tiles on the floor. Owned by a Vietnamese businessman, managed by a 99 percent local team and designed by a Hanoi-based interior design firm, this home-style hotel is a confident symbol of Vietnam’s power, an ideal place to rival the big international hotels. .
Some of the rooms are thatched, thatched, and the bathrooms are dressed in blue stone with wooden curtains and private baths. For your use during your stay, there are woven beach bags and round bamboo never hats, still worn around the country and in great demand on the sun-baked, talcum-soft-sand hotel beach. If you want to take a break from all that sunshine, the hotel can also arrange excursions to local attractions such as the so-called Fairy Stream, a shallow, ankle-deep sandy stream where fairies bathe.
Some beach options are far away, often requiring a flight. Cam Ranh (fly into Nha Trang) is one of the most popular destinations with the best beach weather. Unlike the empty beach of Mei Ne, this is an airy resort town, with large hotels located along the Cam Ranh peninsula, like the Riviera Maya in Mexico.
The 75-acre Alma is the perfect place for large families and large groups; it’s a real village with 580 rooms, 12 pools and a kids club. Recently voted the best resort in Southeast Asia Travel + LeisureThe World’s Best Awards, it boasts a dreamy beach lined with grass parasols and rolling green hills. With nearly 10 restaurants, including the Vietnamese seafood restaurant Atlantis and a market-like food court with indoor food trucks, you’ll eat well here. Don’t miss the mangoes, for which the area—especially Cam Lam—is famous.
“Instead of soil, we have soil,” local guide Christina Nguyen of Zazen Travel told the Observer. “The temperature is right to make the mangoes big, and the taste is different: sweet but also sour.” Nguyen visits local farms with nearly 100-year-old trees (“older trees make mangoes smell better,” Nguyen says), then leads cooking classes back at the hotel, whipping up mango-centric favorites like green mango. salad and seafood. If you don’t like to cook, Alma restaurants have many mango treats to try, such as mango milk tea and delicious mango sago soup.
