The Best Beaches in Da Nang
A visual guide from the Da Nang travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Da Nang sells itself on sand, and it delivers — a coastline running some thirty kilometres, split between the sheltered bay beaches northwest of the river and the long open-ocean strip running east and south toward Hội An. They are not interchangeable. One side is calm, shallow and unfashionable; the other is the postcard, with the surf and the rip currents to match. Here they are north to south, with the seasons that decide whether you actually get in the water.
North to South: The Six Beaches
Nam Ô sits furthest north, below the Hải Vân approach, a working fishing beach at the mouth of the Cu Đê river. Xuân Thiều and Thanh Bình follow it around Đà Nẵng Bay — shallow, sheltered, mostly local, the water flat enough for children. Cross the Hàn river and the coast turns to face the open sea: Mỹ Khê, the famous one, dead straight and lined with clubs; Bắc Mỹ An, the resort stretch behind Furama and its neighbours; then Non Nước, wide and comparatively empty under the Marble Mountains, the last Da Nang beach before Hội An.
Who Each Beach Is For
Swimmers want the bay side or an early Mỹ Khê morning — the water is calmest before the wind gets up mid-morning. Families do best at Xuân Thiều, Thanh Bình or the southern end of Non Nước, where the crowds thin and the sand widens. Surfers get the opposite season to everyone else: the beach breaks along Mỹ Khê and Bắc Mỹ An work when the northeast swell arrives, roughly from September into March. And sunset belongs to the bay — the east-facing beaches are sunrise beaches, which is why locals swim at five in the morning and the promenade is busiest at dawn.
Flags, Rips and the Swim Season
The sea here is not swimmable year-round, whatever the brochures imply. Calm, clear water runs roughly March through August; from September the swell builds, and October to December brings typhoon remnants that can shut the water for days at a time. Lifeguard towers and flagged swim zones cover the main Mỹ Khê and Bắc Mỹ An stretches in season, typically from early morning until late afternoon — swim inside the marked corridor, and get out when the flags go red. Rip currents are the real hazard on a straight sand beach: if one takes you, swim parallel to the shore, not against it.