Diving Vietnam

When taking a holiday to Vietnam you’d be forgiven for thinking adventure sports here were limited to biking (motorbikes and bicycles) and sailing. Perhaps friends have told you about the three-day sailing trips around the majestic Halong Bay to the north of bustling Hanoi, or of hiring a lightweight motorbike and racing along coastal roads. But there is so much more than this and there are plenty of tours that can show you the way if you’re not into the organisational aspect of travelling. From diving to climbing, there’s something for everyone who doesn’t like to sit still. Perhaps you’ve been shark diving a thousand times or are a shark-diving instructor (how cool would that be). But for the rest of us shark-spotting might be the experience of a lifetime. An admission should probably be made at this point that this isn’t going to be you in a cage faced with a Great White Shark with an instructor getting you to signal that you’re okay every two minutes.

Nha Trang is the main diving destination in Vietnam. There are over twenty dive sites here, with Electric Nose being one of the best. From here you can also take a trip out to the beautiful Whale Island. The island is an hour and a half drive from Nha Trang followed by a short boat ride across Van Phong Bay. This is where, between April and July you might spot sharks and whales – given the name of the island you can at least hope for a glimpse of the latter. The whales and sharks come to gorge on the large krill and plankton population.

Since the late nineties, Whale Island has had a resort offering a handful of basic beach huts. It’s not luxury, but if you’re all about the sport this may not be something you’re that bothered about. Meals are included in the price of the stay and often (as you might expect) feature local seafood such as fish, crab and lobster. At the Beach Shore dive site you might expect to see seahorses, stonefish, devilfish and a wide variety of nudibranchs amongst the other sea fauna.

It’s also possible to dive from Hoi An, one of Vietnam’s great cities. This is a wonderful place to enjoy as much for the city itself as for the diving. Hoi An is famous for the amount of tailors who reside here. Customers can choose designs from battered UK retail catalogues or have a go at designing themselves. The tailors can make up an entire made-to-measure outfit in around three days. Here too are colourful handmade paper lanterns and wonderful restaurants. The architecture is a real mixture, from the old Japanese part of the city, to the bit with French architecture – the odd patisserie serving a wonderful pain au chocolat. Dive sites off Hoi An are in the Cu Lao Cham Marine Park. There are a couple of hundred varieties of fish here including small pretty reef fish. There’s an excellent train service that runs out of Hoi An to Hanoi in the north, or Ho Chi Minh City in the South when it’s time to fly home.

Meena is diving mad. She’s dived all over the world and enjoys exploring places less well known for their dive sites than others to see what she thinks. She hopes sharing this knowledge will encourage others to get off the beaten reef.