Jungle Beach Resort north of Nha Trang on Vietnam’s central coast will soon close its flimsy bamboo doors for the last time. We hope this doesn’t mean that one of the last pristine stretches of Vietnam’s long coastline is about to go the way of nearby Nha Trang, Danang and Phu Quoc. One of Vietnam’s most spartan beach resorts, Jungle Beach in Ninh Hoa, north of Nha Trang, will soon close after sixteen years. To describe Jungle Beach Resort as raw, would be to attribute an opulence to the place that is undeserved. A stay at Jungle Beach was about as close as you’d care to get to sleeping out in the elements - and that was an option too. But these were very agreeable elements. I’d been hearing about Jungle Beach for more than a decade before I finally made it there a couple of months ago. My experience was brief - maybe 12 hours - after jumping off a train at Ninh Hoa station. It was enough time to grab dinner, go to bed, wake up for a walk and a swim, before heading on. That was all I needed to get a sense of the place - though I could easily have stayed longer.
