White-sand beaches stretch beyond the horizon, towering mountains sit silently in the distance: for the most part, the natural landscape of Nha Trang remains relatively unchanged between the late 1960s and 2019. It’s the people and skyline that are vastly different.
This set of photos was taken by Clare Love, who toured Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Judging by the sparse amount of vehicles and people on the street, the sleepy coastal town led a much simpler life than today, with nary a tourist in sight, either in town or on the beach.
In 2019, a visit to Nha Trang will yield many photos with Russian- and Chinese-language shopfronts, the result of the city’s popularity as an affordable destination for snowbirds. The rise of the local tourism industry undeniably lifted many families, who undertake services catering to the surge of international travelers, out of poverty. But unbridled tourism has also brought about rampant concretization and the boom of high-rise hotels, which are choking the city and causing environmental disasters like landslides and water pollution.
Walk around town in a quaint Nha Trang that was relatively untouched by the pressures of tourism through the photos below:
[Photos via Flickr user manhhai]
