Vung Tau City

If you are in Saigon and thirst for vitamin sea or need a quick escape from busy life, Vũng Tàu is what you are looking for. Located just a 100km south-east of Saigon, this bustling city has ocean on three sides, salty but fresh air, sandy beach and many coastal activities to make this an ideal weekend destination for you. Follow the advice in this article and you will probably want to come back to Vũng Tàu more than once.

From The Saint's arm we are

Vung Tau in my memory was simply just a tourist trap where the beach is dirty and always full of people, poor services at cheap hotels and vendors ripping off tourists. All of these add a huge minus to my determination to visit this beach again. However, in 2016, the People’s Committee of Ba Ria – Vung Tau province took action to reorganize the city, started with banning people to sell or bring food to the beach and fined anyone who littering. Their vision is to make Vung Tau an ideal attraction for the Saigon’s go-to-beach. Recently, I had a chance to travel back to Vung Tau and I was so surprised to see the magic happened. The water was so blue and clean which makes you want to jump into it to beat the summer heat. The sand is beautiful with colorful umbrella and beach couches lined up. Everything is well-organized like what you usually see on the travel magazines.

There are many places to see and things to do when you travel to Vung Tau, the city even claims to be the first vacation spot of South Vietnam.. You can expect to swim in the jewel blue sea or go hiking to the top of the mountain to catch a glimpse of the beautiful city. Making a decision of where to go can be tough so let us give you a hand. Here are some main places you should put on your itinerary.

The calmness of the sea and and the pleasant weather makes Bài Sau an ideal place for the beachgoers to come and relax. Whenever life in Saigon makes you feel overwhelmed, just come to Bài Sau in Vũng Tàu and lay on the silky sand to sunbathe while listening to the ocean song of the waves. The warm currents run through the sea which influences the temperatures of the area and the average temperature is around 27.5*C (81.5*F). This is perfect for those who love swimming to spend the whole day in the water. In case you don’t like the sun and need more shades, you can rent the beach benches for around 30,000 VNĐ/couch. Bài Sau is also the place where many restaurants and hotels located.

Front Sea

The city park

Together with Back Sea, Front Sea is another beautiful beach of Vung Tau where people usually go picnic on the day and party when the sun goes down. However, because of a ferry port and offshore drilling nearby, the water here is not very clean to swim in. Nevertheless, you can take advantage of the city park for an outing. What the local tourists usually do is buying the fresh seafood at Xom Luoi market and bring it to the green grass on Front Sea for a picnic. The lines of palms and coconut trees have create the perfect shade for you to lay down and read a good book.

Sleeping boats

Credit to: Mjnjcky