Diving in Vietnam, and the two seasons that run opposite

Diving in Vietnam is two different propositions. It is one of the cheapest places in the world to put a certification in your logbook, and a middling place to use it. Both halves of that are true at once, and knowing which you came for decides where and when you go.

Is Vietnam actually worth diving?

For learning, yes, emphatically. For a dedicated diving holiday, no. Visibility at the good sites runs 10 to 30 m in season and the reef life is decent, but nothing here competes with Indonesia or the Philippines, and no serious diver books a flight for it.

What Vietnam offers is price and convenience. A certification costs a fraction of what it does in Europe or Australia, and the dive towns are places you would visit anyway.

Where is the diving in Vietnam actually good?

Three places, and they are good at different things.

Con Dao has the best water in the country. The archipelago is a national park, the boats are few, and the visibility is the clearest Vietnam offers. It also costs an extra flight from Saigon and the sea can cancel your day.

Nha Trang is where most people learn. It is the cheapest, the easiest to reach — the airport and the railway are both in town — and the busiest. Sites are close to shore and conditions are gentle, which is exactly what a course wants.

Phu Quoc is the convenient one: direct international flights, a 30-day visa exemption, and dive centres attached to the resorts. Its water is the least reliable of the three, with visibility dropping to 3 to 5 m on some southern sites even in the dry season.

The Cham Islands off Hoi An are the fourth, usually done as a day trip rather than a base.

When does each coast dive?

The dive season depends on the coast, and this is the part that ruins trips. Nha Trang and Con Dao dive from roughly March to September. Phu Quoc dives from roughly October to April.

The two are opposite because they sit on opposite sides of the country, and the same split governs where the beaches work. An itinerary that puts Nha Trang and Phu Quoc in the same fortnight will find one of them out of season.

What does diving in Vietnam cost?

A PADI Open Water course runs about $250 to $350 in Vietnam, rising to roughly $350 to $430 on Phu Quoc. That is among the lowest pricing available anywhere for the same qualification.

Two fun dives including gear, boat and lunch run about $70 to $130, cheapest in Nha Trang and dearest on Con Dao, where the boat has further to go and fewer people to share it.

Set that against the rest of a trip using the cost guide: a certification here costs roughly what a week of everything else does.

Should you dive or snorkel?

Snorkel, if you are undecided and the trip is short. The island trips off Nha Trang, Phu Quoc and Con Dao all include snorkelling for a fraction of a dive day, and on a site with 5 m visibility the difference between the two experiences is smaller than the price suggests.

Dive if you want the certification, or if you are going to Con Dao in season, which is the one case in Vietnam where the water genuinely rewards the tank.

What should you check before booking?

Two things, both dull and both worth it. First, that your travel insurance covers diving to the depth you will reach — many policies exclude it or cap it, and the same small print catches motorbike injuries.

Second, the weather rather than the calendar. A season is an average, and a boat day is a specific morning. Operators cancel for swell, and on Con Dao that is common enough to build a spare day into the trip rather than book the last one before a flight.