Location · Central Coast
Nha Trang
A resort coast with a real city behind it, and bays quiet enough to hear.
A resort coast with a real city behind it, and bays quiet enough to hear.
More couples ask us about Nha Trang than about any other beach in Vietnam, and almost all of them are asking the same two things: which resort, and when. Here is what we have learned photographing this coast.
Nha Trang is really two places. There is the city beach, six kilometres of sand with hotels along a boulevard behind it: easy, lively, and busy enough that at any hour there is somebody in your background. Then there are the bays, twenty to forty minutes north and south, where the resorts sit on their own stretch of water with hills behind them and nothing else in the frame.
For photographs, the bays win and it is not close. For a holiday, the city has restaurants, a night market and an airport nearby, and plenty of couples want that. If you are choosing a resort and the pictures matter, our advice is to go further out than feels necessary.
January to August is the dry stretch. This surprises people who have planned around Hanoi's calendar: Nha Trang is at its best through the northern summer.
September to December is the wet half of the year on this coast, with October and November the heaviest. We would ask you to move those dates rather than hope.
A Nha Trang session is USD 1,480 for six hours, the same as our other destination sessions. That covers hair and make-up, two gowns and one suit from our wardrobe, 300 to 400 original files and 40 fully retouched photographs.
Two things are quoted on top of that, and both before you pay anything. Our travel, meals and stay, usually USD 150 to 250 depending on where you are. And, at some properties, whatever the resort charges for the use of its grounds, which varies more than anything else on this coast and is the reason we ask which hotel before we confirm a plan.
For comparison, our city sessions are USD 780 in Hanoi and USD 880 in Saigon. The full list is on the collections page.
USD 1,480 for six hours, the same as our other destination sessions. That includes hair and make-up, two gowns and one suit from our wardrobe, 300 to 400 original files and 40 fully retouched photographs. Team travel, meals and stay are quoted separately, usually USD 150 to 250, and we tell you the figure before you pay anything.
January to August. This catches people out: Nha Trang is dry through the northern summer and wet from September to December, which is the opposite of Hanoi and roughly the same as the rest of the central coast. October and November are the months we would ask you to move.
Yes. Most of our work on this coast is at resorts, either a ceremony on the property or a session around it, and we are used to working inside a resort's own rules about where and when. Tell us the property and we will ask them the awkward questions before you arrive.
The city beach is long, convenient and busy, and it photographs as what it is. The quiet comes from the bays north and south of town, twenty to forty minutes out, where the water is clearer and there is nobody in the background. If the pictures matter more than the convenience, go further out.
Cham towers above the city, which are a thousand years old and the one thing here that is unmistakably Vietnamese, fishing harbours in the early morning, and the islands offshore. A session that is only beach starts to look like any beach anywhere, so we usually build in one of these.