Vietnam’s most provincial international beach city

Quy Nhon trip report (2025 edition). A review of apartment and hotel towers under construction, the resort project that will be connected to the city by cable car, the abandoned Japanese-themed new urban area, and prospects for the city with the future high-speed railway.

Quy Nhon, Vietnam

Quy Nhon is the capital of Binh Dinh province, about halfway between Da Nang and Nha Trang. Quy Nhon shares some similarities with its fellow cities in the South Central Coast region. They are major cities that have a municipal beach, and they all have international airports. Quy Nhon, though, is still a domestic destination at heart, and it has a different vibe from its coastal contemporaries.

I had been in Da Nang and Nha Trang in March and April of 2025, and both cities are benefiting from the record-breaking year of international tourist arrivals. I visited Quy Nhon after visiting Da Nang and Nha Trang, and the difference in tourism numbers couldn’t be more stark.

Quy Nhon felt much quieter than Da Nang and Nha Trang, and there were hardly any international tourists around. I checked with the airport flights, and there are currently no international flights to Quy Nhon. The easiest way to tell if there are any foreigners around is to look at the beach. The beaches of Da Nang and Nha Trang are full of people during the day, who are mostly international. Vietnamese (sensibly) do not go to the beach in the middle of the day. I realised this when I didn’t see anyone lying on the beach in Quy Nhon during the day.

No sunbathers in Quy Nhon

This was a refreshing change of pace after being in the busy tourist cities on the coast, but Quy Nhon has aspirations to become more of an international tourism city.

I was last in Quy Nhon at the start of 2023, not long after the shock of the FLC stock manipulation scandal. FLC are a real estate developer that also launched Bamboo Airways. The airline planned to use Quy Nhon as one of its major hubs, bringing international visitors to FLC-branded resorts on the Quy Nhon coast.

Other developers have overreached in Quy Nhon, so the city has not kept pace with Da Nang and Trang (which have development scandals of their own).

I got the train from Da Nang to see how some of the big projects in Quy Nhon are progressing. I spent a day wandering around the city, and another day riding around to visit the derelict new urban areas along the coast.

An abandoned new urban area in Quy Nhon

Provincial mergers

I was in Quy Nhon not long after the government announced the radical plan to merge 63 cities and provinces to 34.

As part of the merger plan, Binh Dinh province will merge with Gia Lai province in the Central Highlands. The new province will be called Gia Lai, and Quy Nhon will be the capital of this merged province. The current capital of Gia Lai (Pleiku) will lose its capital status.

This merger will be an enormous administrative exercise, as layers of government are being removed, wards and communes are being redrawn, and thousands of government workers are being retired.

In Quy Nhon, there are many institutions named after the province. The new convention centre is named after the province instead of the city, so that will need a name change. And how long will it take for places like the Binh Dinh General Hospital to change names?

Will Binh Dinh General Hospital become Gia Lai General Hospital?

Quy Nhon City

I stay near the beach when I visit Quy Nhon. One thing I noticed on this trip is that Quy Nhon is kept in a tidy state, even if there are still many old houses. I think this was the first time I’ve seen a mechanical beach cleaner in Vietnam as well.

Cleaning Quy Nhon Beach

Quy Nhon feels extra provincial after being in Da Nang and Nha Trang, with hardly any international chains in Quy Nhon. In a sign that things are changing, I arrived in Quy Nhon the day after the first Starbucks in the city opened.

Starbucks Quy Nhon

Another thing I noticed was that a local taxi company are using these small Chinese cars for their fleet. They must have committed to these vehicles before the Vinfast VF3 mini cars took over the country.

Taxi in Quy Nhon

Here are some of the main construction projects in the city.

Cadia Quy Nhơn

Cadia Quy Nhon

Cadia Quy Nhơn is a two-tower project next to the main city square by the beach. The project includes apartments and a Courtyard by Marriott hotel. This is an important location in the city, but this project has not progressed since my last visit.

In 2022, it was announced that the Courtyard by Marriott Quy Nhon would open in early 2025. The website of the hotel developer has a landing page for Quy Nhon, but the page features information about another project.

The official website that is advertised at the construction site is now abandoned and used by an advertising site, so that is not a good sign.

The Sailing Quy Nhơn

The Sailing Quy Nhon

Every city I’ve visited in Vietnam has a prominent abandoned or unfinished construction project. The Sailing Quy Nhơn is the most prominent unfinished building in Quy Nhon.

The building has two towers that are wider than the average apartment tower, so they make a big impact on the skyline.

View of The Sailing project from my hotel

This was half-built when I saw it two years ago, so at least progress has been made. There were no workers on site, so I will check back for updates.

Unfinished The Sailing

Quy Nhon Melody

Quy Nhon Melody (Tropical and Flamenco)

Quy Nhon Melody comprises two towers of 35 floors each. This is another project that has been under construction for years, but is still not open.

Quy Nhon Melody Tropical

There were some workers onsite for Quy Nhon Melody Flamenco, so there is hope that this gets finished soon.

Quy Nhon Melody Flamenco

Grand Center Quy Nhon

Grand Center Quy Nhon

Grand Center Quy Nhon is an apartment and office tower complex with 824 units in a 42-floor tower. Like The Sailing Quy Nhơn project, Grand Center Quy Nhon is almost finished, yet work has stopped.

L’aviner Quy Nhơn

L’aviner Quy Nhơn

L’aviner Quy Nhơn is at the top end of the city beach, where the sand thins out before the entrance to the bay. I saw this project begin construction in 2020, so I was happy to see that it looked like it was finished.

When I got to the building, I found a sealed-off construction area with no workers on site. This is another frustrating project that is practically finished yet remains unfinished.

Simona Heights

Simona Heights

Considering how many unfinished towers are in the city, I wasn’t expecting to see a new apartment tower in full construction mode. Simona Heights is in the main city area, a few blocks from the beach.

An Phu Thinh

Outside of the city area is the An Phu Thinh new urban area.

An Phu Thinh

This urban construction style is common in Vietnam, and I have mixed feelings about it. The worst places are where a single developer builds a new urban area with hundreds of cookie-cutter villas and shophouses. They often build too many, and then they are left to rot.

An Phu Thinh seems to be a more sensible new urban area. The streets have been gridded out, and it looks like people can build properties to their taste. It looks sparse now, but give it a few years when the blocks are filled in, and the trees have grown, and this could be a nice neighbourhood.

There are some apartment towers planned in this area as well, so having some density should encourage more shops and cafes on the street level.

Phuong Mai Peninsula

One aspect that fascinates me about Quy Nhon is its geography. There are two distinctly different coastlines within the city boundary. The beaches of Phuong Mai Peninsula area are so different to the city beach, so making time to see them while you are in Quy Nhon is a must.

Map of Quy Nhon

Merryland Quy Nhon

Merryland Quy Nhon

The Merryland Quy Nhon project is being advertised on billboards around the city, and I have seen ads for it at most airports in Vietnam.

Advertising for Merryland Quy Nhon in Quy Nhon City

Merryland Quy Nhon is at the bottom of the Phuong Mai Peninsula, and a new road has been built in this area.

Road to Merryland Quy Nhon

I arrived at the entrance to find that it was barricaded, so no visit for me.

Entrance to Merryland Quy Nhon

This development is carved out of a valley in front of a beach. New roads had to be built to serve it, and there is a new bridge that is being built to shorten the trip on the peninsula. There is also a plan to build a cable car from the city to this resort area (Vietnam loves a cable car project).

Some of the promotional images show a cruise ship terminal, though the billboard image shows the cruise ship parked at the beach.

This is the sort of project that has proliferated across Phu Quoc. All of these projects built an excessive number of buildings in advance when there was no demand for them in the first place.

Most of the local news related to Merryland is undisclosed press releases/advertorials. The occasional report does slip through, such as this report that the developer was in the red in 2024.

Nhon Hoi Economic Zone

The Phuong Mai Peninsula is part of the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone, which is being used for industrial and residential developments.

The area has new roads that go through towering dunes.

There is hardly any traffic in this area, so it’s a relaxing place to cruise around on a motorbike among the wind and solar farms.

Takashi Ocean Suite Ky Co / Nhon Hoi New City

One of the projects I’ve been following in this area is Nhon Hoi New City. This area is visible on Google Maps with streets laid out in advance.

There are so many unofficial real estate websites that it’s difficult to tell the names of each area. There is one area called Ky Co Gateway, and Nhon Hoi New City is shown as different places on different maps. The best way to find out is to go and have a look.

I drove to the new area on new roads.

In the distance, I saw a Tori gate. This is the Takashi Ocean Suite Ky Co project.

There were some signs advertising the project next to the new roads, and an abandoned sales showroom near the Tori gate.

I like to think that I know of most of the oddball projects like this in Vietnam, so I was surprised to find something new. Usually, these projects target me with Facebook ads as soon as I look at a real estate project online. The targeted ads are annoying, but they have proven to be a good source of discovering projects that are active.

This peninsula is desolate in a population sense and a literal desert sense. It’s within the boundary of Quy Nhon City but far from any population base.

I rode around the empty streets, amazed at what I was seeing. This area is a big pile of sand, and it looks like they just painted the roads onto the dunes. I got to one section of the road that had collapsed on an eroded dune.

Another remarkable site in this area is that they transplanted hundreds of grown trees. Most of the trees were dead, and they looked like sticks that had been stuck in the ground. The dry sand must have extracted every molecule of water out of the wood.

There are so many things wrong with this project.

• A themed city modelled after another city or country.
• Building a big new urban area in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure or population base to support it.
• An urban area with rows of cookie-cutter houses, which looks more like a boring suburb in Florida and not a vibrant cityscape in Japan.
• An unnecessarily irregular street layout. Why not just make a grid that is easier to walk around? Have a look at what Da Nang has done to make a vibrant beachfront area.

This area was affected by the FLC stock manipulation scandal, so I will return to see how it is going to recover.

Current and future trains

Quy Nhon Station

Quy Nhon and Da Nang are too close for flights, but the train trip currently takes 6 hours. There are only a few useful train times as well, so they are not well connected despite being not far apart.

Train travel along the coast will be radically transformed if/when the high-speed railway is built. Travel between Quy Nhon, Da Nang, and Nha Trang should be reduced to under an hour in each direction.

A lot of attention has been given to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City being connected by a train in 5 and a half hours, but there are many city pairs in between that will flourish. I think that tourists will explore more cities if it is fast and comfortable to do so by train.

Quy Nhon has the distinction of being one of the few cities with a spur line off the North-South Railway (along with Phan Thiet). The line branches off Dieu Tri Station on the North-South Line and goes to Quy Nhon City. The Saigon – Quy Nhon train service runs during the summer months and on public holidays. I’ve always wanted to do this trip, but I happened to be leaving Quy Nhon a few days before the Reunification Day holiday, so I missed out.

The future high-speed railway will be near the current station, so Quy Nhon will still not be on the main line. I wondered if Quy Nhon should turn the spur line into an urban railway to ferry passengers from the city centre to the high-speed railway. I wrote about that in my article about connecting Vietnam’s high-speed railway stations with urban rail transit.