Where to Stay in Nha Trang for a Golf Trip (2026): City Centre, Cam Ranh or Hon Tre Island?

Last updated: 14 October 2026

A guest emailed us last month with a four-night Nha Trang booking at a beachfront hotel and tee times at KN Golf Links on three of the four days. Nothing wrong with either choice, except that KN is 42 km and about 55 minutes south of that hotel, so he was about to spend six hours of his holiday in a car. Where to stay in Nha Trang for golf comes down to one thing: which courses you will play. This guide gives you the drive times from each base to all four courses and the hotels we put golfers in.

The short answer: base yourself by the courses you will play

Pick the hotel after the tee times, not before. Nha Trang’s four courses are spread along roughly 60 km of coast, and no single hotel is close to all of them. The city is right for two of them, the Cam Ranh peninsula for the other two, and Hon Tre island for exactly one.

The split looks like this. Vinpearl Golf sits on Hon Tre island, across the bay from the city. Diamond Bay is a short run south of the centre. KN Golf Links is on Bai Dai beach on the Cam Ranh peninsula, next to the airport. ANARA Binh Tien is further south again, past Cam Ranh. If you are still deciding which of the four to play, our overview of golf in Nha Trang compares them hole for hole; this article assumes you have a shortlist and need a bed near it.

How far is each base from every course?

From the city centre to KN Golf Links is about 55 minutes; from Ana Mandara Cam Ranh it is about 20. That single row explains most of the decisions in this guide. We checked every drive below on Google Maps on 9 and 14 October 2026, in daytime traffic, and rounded to the nearest five minutes.

Two of those numbers surprise people. KN is not “20 minutes from Nha Trang” as some older listings say; it is 55. And ANARA is a 90-minute drive from the city, which makes it a day trip or an airport-day round, not a quick morning. Nha Trang Bay is calm most of the year, but the Vinpearl boat does add a fixed 20 minutes each way to any mainland course, which is why island hotels suit island golf and little else.

Cam Ranh and Bai Dai: the golf base

Cam Ranh is where you stay if KN Golf Links is why you came. The Bai Dai strip of resorts runs along the Cam Ranh peninsula between the airport and the course, so a round at KN is a 20-minute transfer and a flight home is a 15-minute one. Diamond Bay is also about 20 minutes north, which means two of the four courses are within easy reach without ever seeing the city.

The second reason is the clock. A 7:00 tee time at KN means leaving a Bai Dai resort at 6:30; from the city it means a 5:50 departure, every golf day. Over three rounds that is the difference between a holiday and a commute. The third is the airport: early flights out and late flights in are painless when the hotel is nine kilometres from the terminal. The Bai Dai resorts are all beachfront and resort-style; Ana Mandara Cam Ranh is the one we use most, and you can see its drive times on that page.

One honest caveat from our team: Bai Dai is quiet in the evening. Dinner is at the resort or a short drive away, and there is no night market to wander. Groups who want a bar crawl after the round tend to prefer the city; groups who want the pool bar and an early tee time are very happy here.

Nha Trang city: beach, night market and the island pier

Stay in the city if your rounds are at Diamond Bay and Vinpearl Golf, or if the non-golfers in the group outnumber the golfers. From Tran Phu street, Diamond Bay is 20–25 minutes south and the Vinpearl speedboat leaves from Cau Da pier, about 12 minutes away. Both courses can be played from a city hotel with a normal breakfast and no pre-dawn alarm.

The reason the city works for golf groups is what happens after the round. Dinner, bars, the night market and the beach are all on foot from any hotel on Tran Phu or Biet Thu, so a four-ball never needs a car in the evening, and non-golfers have a full day without one. The price of that convenience is KN: 55 minutes each way, which is why we push the peninsula course to the arrival or departure day for city-based guests (more on that below). On Tran Phu we usually book Novotel Nha Trang; the exact hotel matters far less than the street.

One more reason to pick the city: it is the only base with a real spread of budgets. Three-star hotels a street back from the beach (Biet Thu Street, where we book Asia Paradise Hotel for budget groups) sit two minutes from four- and five-star towers, so a group with mixed budgets can stay in the same quarter and still walk to the same dinner. Cam Ranh and Hon Tre are resort-only.

Hon Tre island: sleeping next to Vinpearl Golf

Sleep on Hon Tre only if Vinpearl Golf is the round you care about most. The reason is simple: it is the one course in Nha Trang you cannot reach without a boat, and the boat runs on a timetable, not yours. Staying on the island turns that round into a buggy ride with no crossing and no alarm clock, and it is the only base where a couple can play in the morning and be back at the pool before lunch. The island has a few resorts; Vinpearl Luxury Nha Trang is the one that shares the island with the course.

The trade-off is every other course. Each mainland round starts with the crossing back to Cau Da, then the drive: about 20 minutes to Diamond Bay, about 55 to KN. In our experience the island works beautifully for two or three nights with one or two rounds at Vinpearl, and badly as a base for a four-course week.

Should you split your nights between Cam Ranh and the city?

Yes, if you are playing KN and at least one city-side course over four nights or more. Two nights in Cam Ranh for KN (and ANARA if you are keen), then two nights in the city for Diamond Bay, Vinpearl Golf and the evenings out. You lose an hour to the hotel change, and save most of the five or six hours you would otherwise spend commuting to KN.

This is how we build the five-day Nha Trang golf and beach holiday: three courses across two bases, with the transfer between hotels timed to fall on a golf morning so no day is lost to packing. For a three-night trip the split is not worth it; pick one base and accept a longer transfer for one round.

Which base suits which golfer?

Most groups fit one of the four rows below. The base is the decision; the hotel column is just an example of what that base looks like in practice.

Every row above, and the rounds that go with it, can be booked as one itinerary through our Nha Trang golf packages, with caddie and cart included at all four courses (both are compulsory in Nha Trang) and private transfers between hotel, pier and course.

Arrival and departure days: play KN on the way in or out

Whatever base you choose, put KN Golf Links on the day you land or the day you fly. Cam Ranh International Airport is about 15 minutes from the course, so a morning arrival can go straight from the terminal to the first tee and on to the hotel afterwards; an evening departure can leave the city after breakfast, play KN, shower at the clubhouse and be at the airport in a quarter of an hour. City-based guests who do this never make the 55-minute drive twice.

GoGolfVietnam arranges this routinely for guests flying in from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi: a car meets the flight, clubs stay in the boot, and the round at KN starts within an hour of landing. It is the single easiest way to fit the peninsula course into a city-based trip.

Travelling with non-golfers

If half the group does not play, the city wins, and it is not close. The beach is across Tran Phu street, the night market is a few minutes on foot, and the Cau Da pier serves the island day trips as well as the golf boat. Cam Ranh has a beautiful beach and not much else within walking distance, and Hon Tre is a self-contained resort island. We have a separate day plan for non-golfers in Nha Trang built around the golfer’s tee time, so the two halves of the group meet for lunch rather than dinner.

Frequently Asked Questions

GoGolfVietnam, a local golf tour operator based in Da Nang, arranges tee times, transfers and hotels across Vietnam, including Nha Trang and Cam Ranh.