Vietnam's under-the-radar beach city — before the crowds arrive
Quy Nhon is the sleeper hit of Vietnam's central coast — a mid-sized port city with spectacular beaches, almost no backpacker infrastructure, and some of the best fresh seafood you'll eat anywhere in the country. It sits at the foot of the Trung Son mountain range where it meets the East Sea, with a long crescent beach barely 10 minutes from the old town market. The nearby Cham towers of Banh It and Duong Long — among the oldest and best-preserved Cham architecture in Vietnam — see a fraction of the visitors that flock to Mỹ Sơn. FLC Quy Nhon has brought some resort development, but the city…
This stretch of coast was the heartland of the Cham civilisation — the Indianised kingdom that dominated central Vietnam from the 2nd to the 17th centuries. The Vijaya citadel, built around the 10th century near modern Quy Nhon, was the Cham capital for over 500 years until it fell to the Vietnamese in 1471 in one of the most catastrophic defeats in Cham history. The Tây Sơn uprising of 1771-1802 — one of Vietnam's most significant peasant rebellions — originated in the hills behind Quy Nhon, and the Tây Sơn brothers briefly unified Vietnam before being defeated by Nguyễn Ánh (who became Empe…