After seeing photos of one of our friends on Facebook eating lobster on the beach in Nha Trang, Vietnam, this beach has been on our list of must visit places. We finally had the opportunity to visit when our friends from Canada, fellow bloggers Taya and Gary came to visit us in Singapore. As we are all Canadians, we all needed to arrange for Visas before hand. There are a few different ways to get a Vietnam visa, what we found to be really easy was applying online through My Vietnam Visa for a visa on arrival. It was so fast and easy, we are surprised that more people don't use this method, but maybe it's better so the line up at the airport isn't too long.
Since we were visiting Nha Trang in January, the weather was a bit colder around 22-25 degrees Celsius, and was overcast most of the time. Not the best beach weather, but it makes for a great excuse to not leave your hotel. Because we were staying at the Sheraton, we were very happy spending the whole time in our hotel and turning our vacation into a relaxing spa retreat. The Sheraton in Nha Trang is a gorgeous brand new hotel, right behind Nha Trang beach. The Shine spa is beautiful and the treatments are very reasonably priced for such a nice hotel. A one hour massage or treatment ranged from $35-$65 USD so between the four of us we tried a lot of them including the Vietnamese shine massage, Arabian back massage, Indian head massage, and their foot massage.
As much as we loved the Spa at the Sheraton, we decided to venture out of the hotel for one of the days to try another popular spa called SuSpa . I had a 70 minute body scrub and body mask while my husband had a 100 minute head, back and foot massage, $49 and $42 USD respectively. While the treatments were really good, and my husband said the massage was nice and strong, the professionalism of the staff and the ambiance of the spa did not come close to the quality of the Sheraton, while the prices were. For this we highly recommend the spa at the Sheraton, even if you don't stay there.
The Sheraton in Nha Trang made for an ideal spa vacation with it's state of the art gym with views of the ocean, to the complementary use of the steam room, sauna & jacuzzi, and it's own private section of the beach. We will never stay any where else when we are looking for a spa vacation, visit fitathletic.com.
Tips:
As Canadians that live abroad, we found a taste of home at the top of Ha Van hotel where a bar owned by a Canadian offers poutine!
An easy way to get to Nha Trang is to fly on Vietnam Airlines direct from Ho Chi Mihn City
The popular tourist restaurants in Nha Trang are the Sailing Club and the Louisiane Brewhouse but if you want to try some thing different we found a great seafood restaurant along the beach called Svetlana 378 restaurant at the north end of Nha Trang beach past the Sheraton. The prices, food and view were excellent.
Venture out of the tourist area and try a banh mi sandwich or pho from a street stall or tiny restaurant. We were all skeptical that we would get sick, but many banh mi sandwiches later and we were all fine.
Try lobster on the beach from one of the sellers carrying baskets of seafood. They barbecue the lobster right in front of you on the beach. We had 1 lobster that was excellent and the other tasted fishy, so the best way to make sure it's fresh is to ask for live lobsters.
