Nha Trang Beach

Extent and setting

The beach runs along the whole eastern edge of the old city centre. Its northern limit is the mouth of the Cái river, where the Trần Phú bridge, 458.27 m long and 22 m wide with four lanes, was built between 3 September 1999 and 2 September 2002 to carry the seafront road across the river^[7]. Before the bridge the river bank at Xóm Cồn was lined with stilt houses, which were cleared around 1998 under the city's 1995 to 2000 development programme, their residents moving to resettlement areas at Song Thủy and Hòn Rớ; embankments were then built along both banks^[8].

The southern limit is the port at Cầu Đá, at the foot of the hills that carry the Bảo Đại villas and the Institute of Oceanography^[1]. The three lengths in the sources do not measure the same thing: the 6 and 7 km figures describe the beach south of the river^[1][2], while the 16.4 km figure of the provincial planning presentation of October 2025 covers the whole urban waterfront along Trần Phú and Phạm Văn Đồng, through both Nha Trang and Bắc Nha Trang wards^[3].

The seafront park

A strip of public park separates the sand from Trần Phú street and, north of the river, from Phạm Văn Đồng road. The provincial newspaper describes the strip as nearly 20 km long and its planning area as 240 ha^[9]. Keeping it public has been a recurring decision: the provincial Party Standing Committee resolved in 2018 to preserve the coastal park strip, the provincial government ordered the recovery of built-on land in 2019, the land of the Nha Trang Sao project (over 100,000 m², begun with a ground-breaking in 2014) was forcibly recovered in early 2021, and the Evason Ana Mandara resort on the beach ceased operations and relocated in June 2022^[9]. Other plots reported as recovered or scheduled for recovery were the Phù Đổng Park site of nearly 24,000 m², of which 21,772 m² had been taken back, the Louisiane restaurant site of over 4,800 m² and the Sailing Club site of over 2,000 m²^[9].

The park is run by the Nha Trang Public Services Management Board. By September 2023 it had installed 7 free drinking-water taps along Trần Phú and Phạm Văn Đồng, 32 foot-washing stations at beach entrances, 6 underground toilets of 80 m² each, 141 outdoor exercise stations and a 10.9 m test path made from about 32,000 recycled plastic bottles^[11].

Plans of 2025 and 2026

On 25 October 2025 the Director of the provincial Department of Construction, Nguyễn Thành Phú, and the chairman of the provincial People's Committee, Nguyễn Khắc Toàn, presented a plan to turn the 16.4 km waterfront into a chain of parks of 253 ha in four zones; the first zone was to include a light plaza of 2 ha for 22,000 people and an artistic water feature of 1.5 ha. Detailed 1/500 planning was due by 1 February 2026 and a plan for auctioning the former Ana Mandara land by 1 March 2026^[3]. Design consultants for an earlier round of proposals, in 2023, had put forward a 20 km cycling route along the coast and a 25 per cent increase in vegetation^[10].

By May 2026 the Nha Trang ward People's Committee had completed a detailed plan for the strip east of Trần Phú, over 80.6 ha from the Trần Phú bridge to the Nha Trang port area, in which construction density in the park zone is capped at 5 per cent and the 2 April Square and the Trầm Hương tower are kept as central spaces^[12]. The plan allots 275,500 m² (34.2 per cent) to parks and green space, 32,300 m² to squares, 97,200 m² to sand beach and 221,500 m² to transport, with 13 car parks of which 3 underground, 3 pedestrian underpasses and a cycle path along the shore; it is phased to 2030 and to 2040^[13].

Works on the northern shore

North of the river the beach below Phạm Văn Đồng road is narrower and interrupted by the Hòn Chồng headland. In June 2013 the developer of the Mường Thanh hotel complex, with provincial and city permission requested on 22 April 2013, replaced silt and rock on the shore near Hòn Một in the former ward of Vĩnh Hòa with sand brought from Cam Ranh, in a 15-day operation from 2 June 2013; the newspaper report gives the sand volume as about 600,000 m³ and the planned beach as about 700 m²^[14], two figures that are printed as given but hard to reconcile. The public services board planned further toilets for the Hòn Chồng park and the Phạm Văn Đồng seaside and more foot-washing stations for the Phạm Văn Đồng beach in 2023^[11].

Administration

Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15 of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, adopted on 16 June 2025, abolished the city of Nha Trang as an administrative unit and regrouped its wards and communes into four wards that began operating on 1 July 2025. The beach south of the river lies in Nha Trang ward, made from Vạn Thạnh, Lộc Thọ, Vĩnh Nguyên, Tân Tiến and Phước Hòa; the shore along Phạm Văn Đồng lies in Bắc Nha Trang ward, made from Vĩnh Hòa, Vĩnh Hải, Vĩnh Phước, Vĩnh Thọ, Vĩnh Lương and Vĩnh Phương^[6]. No published notice closing the beach for water quality was found in the sources consulted; the 1990s widening of Trần Phú street is likewise undated in them.