Things to do in Qui Nhon

The Old Tank

On the beach, just south of the Lan Anh Hotel, is one of the very few pieces of war detritus in all of Vietnam that is actually still left in place. A tank, abandoned by fleeing South Vietnamese forces towards the end of the war, was left on the beach and has worked it's way so deep into the sand, not even the most eager scrap collector has bothered to work it out. You can still see the top of the tank and the gun turret, especially at low tide. It makes for a good Kodak moment with your friends. There's a picture in the Binh Dinh Museum in town, taken of this spot, with the Phuong Mai peninsula in the background, and destroyed tanks littering the beach. It might even be a picture of the same tank, but we couldn't be sure -- something fun to check out and decide for yourself.

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Buried on the beach, Qui Nhon

Phoung Mai Peninsula

One can hardly fail to notice the huge statue of Vietnamese hero Tran Hung Dao on the edge of a peninsula jutting out into the bay to the north as you look out to sea from Qui Nhon beach. It's meant to be viewed from a distance, not visited, but the curious will still want to get up close. It makes for a good, brief excursion.

You can't get to the statue by land -- the Phuong Mai Peninsula is completely cut off by mountains. To catch the boat, head east on Tran Hung Dao St until you're almost at the port and take a left on Ham Tu St. It leads to a pier -- you can securely park your motorbike, if you have one, for 1,000 dong at one of the places near the pier. The boats to Hinh Mai (the town on the other side) gather right at the base of the pier. The boatmen will try to get you to pay 100,000 for a round trip, but if you want to save money, wait around. Locals have to get to the other side, too, and once someone's boat fills up you'll find the price going down -- we paid 15,000 each way.

Once on the other side, you'll have to scramble up the rocky bank of the quay to the get to the village. Like a lot of Vietnamese towns that developed without road access, Hinh Mai has no streets to speak of -- just narrow alleys and walkways snaking among the buildings. If you keep heading towards the statue, the locals will keep pointing you in the right direction. Finally, you'll come across a sign that says, Restricted Area, Do Not Enter, in English and Vietnamese. That's where you enter. There's a switchback road that leads up to the monument. There's nothing much there but an up-close and personal view of the goliath, but it should satisfy your curiosity. If your boatman will wait for you, spend some time exploring the village and stopping for a bite to eat.

The Binh Dinh Museum

There's a small museum in Qui Nhon, just south of the Saigon-Quynhon Hotel on Nguyen Hue, near the intersection with Le Loi. Museum-going in Vietnam is pretty hit or miss outside Hanoi or Saigon, but we found this one worth a look. To the right as you enter is a gallery dedicated to the local Communist Party's struggle during the war with American. Some of the objects on display are humorously inconsequential: limepot of heroic war mother Tran Thi Nhi, Radio of heroic war mother Le Thi Dinh, spittoon of heroic war mother Dang Thi Ruong. But among them are some more interesting war objects, especially the photos with legends in English giving a pretty interesting picture of Vietnam's struggles during the war, and more than anything, the Vietnamese government's approach to remembering it -- the South Vietnamese troops are 'puppet soldiers' and Americans are all 'imperialist invaders.' Qui Nhon is also where a large number of South Korean troops landed and fought, in case you forgot that they fought in the war too.

The centre of the gallery is dedicated to the slightly-less interesting French Colonial period, and the gallery on the left features some well-preserved Cham sculpture. In fact, they have so many Cham relics on hand they don't know what to do with them: they are piled in stacks outside the museum. You may take one as a free parting gift. Not really. Admission is free. Open daily.

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Nguyen Hue, Qui Nhon
Opening Hours: Summer: 07:00 to 11:00, 14:00 to 17:00 Winter: 7:30 to 11:00, 13:30 to 16:30

Long Khanh and Tam An Pagoda

The town's main pagoda is easily accessible and worth a visit. There's a 17 metre tall Buddha here, and a pagoda with some interesting statuary. There's a giant brass drum, a huge bell, and a statue of a 'thousand handed, thousand-eyed goddess of mercy' on display as well. The neighbourhood is also known for it's food -- a good selection of vegetarian restaurants, and some stand-out 'com' joints as well. Good for a morning excursion.

Tam An is a small, pretty pagoda nearby, just east of here, on Tang Bat street. But if you've had enough, it's skippable.

To get here, take Tran Cao Van St north from Nguyen Hue and the pagoda is visible on the left.

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Centre of town, Qui Nhon

Thap Doi

There are about fourteen, variously crumbling, Cham towers still standing upright in Binh Dinh province -- the only thing that makes Thap Doi (twin towers) different is that they are easy to visit from the city centre. They're good examples of the Cham architectural style, if you haven't seen it before, and the grounds are well-tended with a pretty garden.

To get here, head west on Tran Hung Dao, past the new bridge, and keep your eyes peeled for a right hand turn 2 km down. The street is unmarked, but it's the most promising of the right turns you'll find, and there is a very small sign which is only visible if you are coming from the other direction. Luckily it's one site the locals all know and by shouting, Thap Doi, Thap Doi! over and over again, you'll get their fingers wagging in the right direction. A small admission fee is sometimes collected if someone is on site to collect it.

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A few km out of town, Qui Nhon

Queen's Beach (Han Mac Tu Tomb), and Qui Hoa Beach, Leprosy Hospital

These two spots make sense to visit together. As you go down An Duong Vuong St south, just past the HAGL Resort, there's a sharp left turn marked by a gate. Admission to the Queen's Beach area is 5,000 dong, 2,000 more for a motorbike. There's a short climb up a paved road to the top of the headland, where sits the tomb of a famous Vietnamese writer, Han Mac Tu. You can stop for a visit, but it's hardly a highlight, unless you're really into Vietnamese literature. Continuing along, the road leads to the eastern bank of the headland. This is 'Queen's Beach,' named for the wife of Bao Dai, the last king of Vietnam. It's really just a rocky bit of coastline -- we don't know if that's supposed to imply anything about their marriage. There are some cafe's overlooking the water where you can stop for a refreshment, but it's not really a good spot for swimming. You can continue down the road along the headland giving on to the sea for another 2 km -- it makes for a great bike ride or hike -- until you pass through the gate at the bottom of the hill. They may want to see your ticket as you leave, so have it ready. Then you're on Qui Hoa beach, lined with casuarinas trees, and great for swimming. There are some cafes and restaurants along the road, but it's all very peaceful and low key.

The Leprosy Hospital is just off the beach. You can wander around the grounds you like and look at the statues of famous doctors, with a heavy emphasis on Vietnamese and French physicians. There's another hall of notables along the beach, starting with Hypocrites, including the Curies, and a lot of other docs you probably haven't heard of. And just because we know you're wondering, no, there aren't a lot of disfigured people walking around like Night of the Living Dead. At least, we can't be the only ones who were wondering that before we showed up. We hope. It's a state-of-the-art facility where the patients live with their families in little 'chalets.' Visitors are welcome, and those who have taken the tour have found it quite life-affirming.

You can also get to the Leprosy Hospital by not taking the sharp left turn at the end of An Duong Vuong and taking the left fork up the western side of the headland. The entrance to the hospital is well-marked, a hundred metres further down Highway 1A. If you've walked here and don't want to walk back, head to the main gate of the hospital (head west through the hospital if you're on the beach) and ask around there for a ride. It makes for a nice day trip if you're in Qui Nhon for more than the night.

Nhon Hai Village

If you've got your own transport, or you can convince a guide to take you to this seldom- visited spot, Nhon Hai village offers and unique and worthwhile day-trip. It's a fishing village that up until two years ago was only accessible by boat. It's a bit like Hinh Mai, the fishing port at the base of the Tran Hung Dao monument, but much, much more isolated.

Nhon Hai is a village without any streets. Having evolved in the complete absence of any hope of mechanised transport, there was never any necessity to create anything resembling a wide boulevard. Since there is only a small plot of flat ground at the base of a rim of mountains encircling the bay, all development is crowded close together. At the same time, the town is hardly poor, thriving on the fishing trade, so there are three and four story buildings among solid concrete houses. These are all joined by narrow alleyways, like an old village on a Mediterranean hillside. When you arrive from the new road, you'll be at the back of the village. Don't try to ride or drive around from there -- park and explore on foot. There's a long beach front where the locals gather in the afternoon for swimming, and the site of a foreigner here is going to elicit a lot of surprised smiles.

To get here, you need some skills, but common sense and a spirit of adventure will do as well. The new bridge is off of Tran Hung Dao St, heading out of town towards Highway 1A, a kilometre or so before the turn off for the Thap Doi Towers. It's a huge bridge to the right -- you can't miss it. Once you cross the bridge, turn right.

From there the road follows along the water and turns to dirt. It takes a lot of twists and turns, but as long as you follow the path most-frequently travelled, you'll get where you're going. It empties onto a pretty rough dirt path rimming rice fields and fish farms. On the other side there is a much better new road that has been cut into the side of the hills, leading east towards the ocean. These instructions may sound vague, but you'll be trapped in a valley and there's only one way out, so you'll find it eventually. Once you crest the last rise you'll see the village on the bay in the valley below. The trip is about 20 km one way. It's possible to bike it, on a good bike, and you'll have to get off and push for some sections of the journey.

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20km from Qui Nhon

Thap Banh It

Banh It was the highlight of what we found in the area. A series of four elegant Cham towers on a high hill just outside Binh Dinh. Very easy to visit en-route or with a guide from Qui Nhon.

The four towers are what remains of a larger group -- the main tower is 22 metres high, and it looks like a bit of restoration work might have been done on it. All the towers have become home to a wide variety of plants growing through the cracks which, while they give the towers a picturesque look, might just be slowly tearing them apart. The largest tower is also home to a number of bats. You can see the bat guano covering the bottom of the tower's inner floor, and if you listen, you can here the bats cheeping and flying around up inside it. Some of the better bas-reliefs from this site have been carried away and are on display in Danang.

To get here, head out of Qui Nhon on Tran Hung Dao St. After about 9 km it meets up with Highway 1A, there you turn right to head north for another 9 km. You'll hit an intersection and you'll see the towers on a high hill on the right. The extreme right turn leads 17 km back to Qui Nhon, so take the next right at the crossroads across a bridge, heading to the north side of the tower hill. Just past the bridge, there's a field on your right -- you should see some small blue signs pointing towards Thap Banh It. Take another right, backtracking a bit along the river. A kilometre further on, you'll reach a conspicuous left turn that leads to the back of the tower hill. 200 metres along on the left is a small entrance -- it doesn't look like much, but they seem to be building a more impressive gate for the entrance as of this writing. Park anywhere and walk up the road, to the left as you enter. No one was charging admission when we visited.

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Around 20km from Qui Nhon

The Flood Plains

Once you pass Binh Dinh going north, Highway 1A is no fun at all. If you've got time for it in your schedule, we highly recommend taking a right pretty much anywhere. There are miles of wonderful country side, and as you get closer to the sea, you'll notice red and white cement posts with numbers on them lining the roads. Flooding is so frequent here, the posts mark how high the water is in centimetres, so those trying to navigate the roads will know whether or not their vehicle will make it. You'll see a lot of wooden, ox-drawn carts in this region, and you'll start to see why that still makes sense. An ox's engine never floods. And they can swim. And wood floats.

As long as you keep headed generally along the coast as you go north, you'll meet up with Highway 1A eventually. Heading south towards Qui Nhon, you can do the same thing and bale off the main road when it starts getting nasty, although the section of route one north and south of Sa Huynh is quite beautiful.

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North of Binh Dinh

The Tran Hung Dao Museum

The Tran Hung Dao Museum is 48 km from Qui Nhon, just off Highway 19 which heads towards Pleiku. We can only recommend a visit if you happen to be passing by. And even then...

The museum is on a well-tended set of grounds -- you'll be greeted by a larger-than-life statue of the man himself. The museum is directly behind him, but you'll find a paucity of electrifying information about what makes him so famous. The displays contain some legends in English, but even the Vietnamese-only materials don't really tell the story. There are grainy black and white pictures that look like they were taken in the 1950's of places where historical events happened in the 1790's. In other words, overgrown fields. There is some weaponry on display, and some court statuary dating from the period -- heavily restored -- as well as some parchments and some coins. We learned very little about the mighty Tran Hung Dao. One of the curators treated us to a five minute history lesson -- it was hard to understand his English, and he emphasised dates and numbers over insightful information in his recounting of the tale. We left wishing we'd found a good book on the subject rather than trekking all the way out here.

There is a temple next door with nine golden statues of Mr. Tran and his court mandarins -- they are quite exquisite and almost make the trip worth it. There's also a clean and spiffy rong house, built for display purposes, much like the 'real' ones you'd see built by local Banhar tribes in the south-western provinces of Vietnam along the Laos border. A rong house is a tall, rectangular, A-frame structure on short stilts, used traditionally as a celebration and meeting place, and as sleeping quarters for adolescents. Access to a rong house is almost invariably via two wooden ladders, cut from whole logs, shaped to indicate a man and a woman. There are some traditional instruments and artefacts on display inside the house.

To the left of the museum is a theatre featuring performances of traditional music and martial arts, specifically vo binh dinh, a local variant of kendo with bamboo sticks. They charge 200,000 dong per performance and you can arrange one on arrival -- they last 30 minutes. The entrance fee to the museum is 10,000 dong.

To get here, take Highway 1A north from Qui Nhon 21km to Binh Dinh. The intersection for Highway 19 is marked by a sign that says 'Thuy Nha May IALY,' which is in Gia Lai province, so you're headed in the right direction. From the turn it's another 28 km to the well-marked turnoff, right to the museum, 5 km further down -- there's another sign marking the final left turn and you can see the museum grounds from the road. It's helpful to learn the word for museum bao tang.

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48km from Qui Nhon
Opening Hours: 07:00 to 11:30, 13:30 to 17:00

Hoang De (Cha Ban)

This site derives its historical value from having been the seat of the Cham government from about 1000 to 1471 A.D. After a bloody battle, it was taken over and used by the ethnic Vietnamese from then on, though factions fought over it for control of the empire toward the end of the 18th century, until 1801, when Tran Hung Dao became emperor.

There's a lot of interesting history behind the spot, but we found a visit here didn't really bring history alive. It's one of those sites that makes us wish the Vietnamese government would spend less money building resorts that no one goes to, and more money training guides to give informative tours in a number of different languages. You'll have your work cut out for you finding such a guide in Qui Nhon, but if you really want to pay a visit here, that's the way to go.

Going on your own, you'll be presented with a large fenced-in enclosure with some foot prints of old buildings still intact and a pole in the centre, which is apparently made of ivory but it's hard to tell. There's also the tomb of a general, Vu Tinh, who blew himself up rather than be taken alive. The gate is decorated with coloured dragons and gargoyles -- a motif you'll probably seen repeated in temples and pagodas all over Vietnam, and there didn't seem much point to humping all the way out here to see it again.

To get here, head to Binh Dinh on Highway 1A, and coming from the south, go about six kilometres past the town. Slow down and keep your eyes peeled for a small blue sign marking the turnoff to Thap Canh Tien. You'll pass a lone Cham tower on the left, then take your first left then a right, about 2 kilometres total from the main road. The enclosure is on the right.

If you are asking the locals for directions, ask for Hoang De or Thap Canh Tien. No one seems to know it by the name 'Cha Ban.'

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Around 30km from Qui Nhon