Highlights
01Fairy stream
Leave your shoes at the entrance and walk straight up the streambed — warm, ankle-deep water cutting a soft canyon between cliffs of red and white sandstone, eroded into ribs and folds. Half an hour barefoot, no guide, no boardwalk: just the water and the rock.
02Red sand dune
The closest dunes to town, burning orange-red the lower the sun gets — come for the last hour of light. Rent a plastic sled from the kids at the top and run the slopes down toward the sea.
03White Sand Dune
Forty kilometres out, the dunes turn white and enormous — Vietnam's "Little Sahara," a desert running right up to a lotus lake. Rent a quad and open it up across the ridges, or take the slope on a board; either way, come at sunrise, before the sand turns to furnace.
04Grape farm
The same dry heat and hard sun that built the dunes also ripens grapes — this coast grows table varieties under low trellises you can walk straight under. Pick a bunch, taste the wine and syrup they press from it, and stand in the green shade after a morning in the sand.