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NHA TRANG |
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Nestled below the bottom lip of the Cai River, some 260km north of
Phan Thiet, NHA TRANG has earned its place on Vietnam's tourist mainline
partly on merit and partly owing to its location. By the time the Nguyen
lords wrested this patch of the country from Champa in the mid-seventeenth
century, the intriguing Po Nagar Cham towers had already stood, stacked
impressively on a hillside above the Cai, for over 700 years. They
remain Nha Trang's most famous image, yet it's the coastline that brings
tourists flocking: the town boasts the finest municipal beach in
Vietnam, scuba-diving courses are available here, and there are plenty
of day-trips to outlying islands too.
Most new arrivals in the city make a beeline for the municipal beach , a
grand six-kilometre scythe of soft yellow sand that's only five minutes'
stroll east of Cho Dam market. The Pasteur Institute at the top of Tran
Phu houses the Alexandre Yersin Museum (Mon-Sat 8-11am & 2-4.30pm; $2),
which profiles the life of the Swiss-French scientist who settled in Nha
Trang in 1893 and became a local hero, thanks not to his greatest
achievement - the discovery of a plague bacillus - but rather to his
educational work in sanitation and agriculture, and to his ability to
predict typhoons and thus save the lives of fishermen. Yersin's desk is
here, with his own French translations of Horace still slotted under its
glass top; so, too, are the barometers and telescope he used to forecast
the weather, and his phenomenal library. The huge White Buddha seated on
a hillside above Long Son Pagoda in the northwest of town is Nha Trang's
major landmark. It was crafted in 1963 to symbolize the Buddhist
struggle against the repressive Diem regime, and around its lotus-shaped
pedestal are carved images of the monks and nuns that set fire to
themselves in protest.
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