Topic
What each month is actually like, from two years of getting it wrong.
Mango in April and May in Cam Lam, durian in late July and August in Khanh Son, grapes in three crops around Phan Rang with the sweetest in August and September, green apples from March to May, pomelo from late July in Khanh Vinh. October to December is the gap. The table has the months, the sections have where I buy and what a sourced price looked like.
Hang Rai is a raised shelf of fossil coral on the DT702 coast road, run as the visitor site of Nui Chua National Park, and it is not for swimming. Go at first light on a falling tide for the water sheeting off the terraces, and between December and March for the green moss. I never found an official fee; travel sites quote 30,000 to 35,000 VND.
Between November and March Bai Dai is windy, mostly unswimmable and nearly empty, and it is the season I like it best. The beach is public and free from the gaps between the resorts, the tide covers the bathing areas for about half the year, and the kite riders rig at the windy northern end. This is the beach from the public access points, not from a resort.
The Hon Khoi salt fields are about 400 hectares of evaporation pans on the flats behind Doc Let beach, roughly a kilometre from the sand. Salt is made from March to September, most of it from April to July, and the first shift is on the pans from 04:00 to 09:00 because the brine must be spread before the sun. Go at first light in those months.
October and November are the wettest months of the year: roughly half the annual rain falls in those eight weeks and the typhoon window runs to about 10 December. Come if you want cheap rooms and a working city with the mud baths, the cafes and the citadel; do not come for the beach or the boats.
February to May is when I tell friends to come: dry, the sea between 25.5 and 29 degrees, under 70 mm of rain a month. June to August is hot and fine, September turns, and October and November are the two months to avoid unless you like rain. The highlands and the dry south run on different rules.
