Hang out beach
Published/Last edited or updated: 18th December, 2020
You’ll either love or hate Bai Dai Beach (pronounced “bye-yai”, but also known as Long Beach). Located 20 kilometres south of Nha Trang, Bai Dai is removed from the city hustle and traffic and has a more low-key, backpackery feel.
Still, this is the kind of place where you end up hanging out for the whole day, renting beach chairs, reading a book and playing volleyball. Bai Dai attracts a whole mix of people: locals, domestic tourists and foreign travellers. Smack dab in the middle of the action, The Shack and its Bob Marley posters and loud tunes attracts backpackers like flies to honey. It’s the place to be seen, have a burger from the grill and drink fruit shakes or Jager Bombs. On busy days they sometimes have live music. You can also rent boards during the beach’s surf season, from October to April.
All the other restaurants serve seafood. Look into the buckets to find what sea beast you want, ask what the price is per kilo and get them to weigh your selection in front of you and note the weight. You can have it steamed or fried, or have a coal brazier brought to the table so you can barbecue it yourself. If you order seafood that you don’t see alive in the bucket, it is probably frozen. Restaurants have rudimentary toilets and shower/change huts for patrons.
Bai Dai isn’t limited to this hub of shacks. It is possible to continue down along the coast and find completely empty stretches of sand and water all to yourself.
This area is slated to be the next big thing and development has begun: You’ll see fenced off sand dunes, construction sites and makeshift worker villages. But all beaches are public access (we had many locals confirm this), so it is just a matter of driving along the coast and venturing down the roads that lead to ... Travelfish members only (Full text is around 300 words.)
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Cindy Fan
Cindy Fan is a Canadian writer/photographer and author of So Many Miles, a website that chronicles the love of adventure, food and culture. After falling in love with sticky rice and Mekong sunsets, in 2011 she uprooted her life in Toronto to live la vida Laos. She’s travelled to over 40 countries and harbours a deep affection for Africa and Southeast Asia. In between jaunts around the world, she calls Laos and Vietnam home where you’ll find her traipsing through rice paddies, standing beside broken-down buses and in villages laughing with the locals.
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