Vietnam during COVID: how Nha Trang lived through the pandemic
Today Nha Trang is full of tourists again, and the beaches along Tran Phu promenade are never empty. But only a few years ago things looked very different. We lived here through the entire COVID-19 pandemic — from the closed borders of spring 2020 to life fully returning in 2022. This is the story of how Vietnam and our city went through those years, without panic and without sugar-coating.
How Vietnam closed in 2020
Vietnam reacted to the virus among the first in Asia, and very firmly. Events moved fast:
- 🛑 January 31, 2020 — the border with China was closed.
- ✈️ March 22, 2020 — entry was suspended for all foreigners, borders fully shut.
- 🏠 April 1, 2020 — a 15-day nationwide lockdown.
- 🦠 From mid-April to the end of July 2020 there were almost no local infections.
For a tourist town like Nha Trang this meant an instant stop: flights cancelled, hotels emptied, and the main engine of the economy simply switched off for an unknown period.
An empty Nha Trang
The strangest sight was the deserted resort. The promenade, usually packed with thousands of people, stood silent. Closed restaurants, dark travel-agency windows, hotels without guests. The beach belonged to locals and the few expats who, like us, chose to stay.
There was something honest in that quiet: a town that had lived for tourists for years suddenly became simply a Vietnamese seaside town again — with fishermen in the mornings, cafes for locals, and the sea that had gone nowhere.
Life of locals and those who stayed
The Vietnamese went through the pandemic calmly and with discipline. Masks, temperature checks, tracing apps, a readiness to follow the rules — all of it worked without hysteria. Neighbours helped each other, markets kept feeding the district, and prices stayed reasonable.
For us it was the time when one thing became clear: Vietnam is not only about holidays. It is a place where you can live, work and make plans even in the hardest of times.
The strictest lockdown: 2021 and Delta
If Vietnam came through 2020 almost unscathed, the summer of 2021 brought the Delta variant and things became truly hard. The lockdown in Nha Trang held at least until the end of August 2021: movement restrictions, closed venues, permits to go out.
It was the longest and hardest stretch — for locals and for the few who stayed. But it was exactly that discipline and patience that eventually helped the country out of this wave.
How Vietnam coped
Compared with many countries, Vietnam came through the pandemic with relatively low losses — thanks to early and firm measures, border control and people's willingness to follow the rules. The price for the economy was high: tourism, which makes up about 10% of the country's GDP, effectively stood still for two years.
But it was this strategy that allowed a relatively quick return to normal life as soon as vaccination arrived and reopening became possible.
The return of tourists
The light at the end of the tunnel appeared in autumn 2021: in October it was announced that tourists would be allowed into Nha Trang from December. And on March 15, 2022 Vietnam fully reopened its borders to international tourism.
After that things moved fast. Flights returned, hotels filled up again, the promenade came alive. Today tourist numbers are breaking records, and Nha Trang and Cam Ranh are again among the favourite resorts for Russians, Koreans and Chinese.
Why we stayed — and where flowers come in
We lived through all of it here: the empty beaches, the lockdown, the quiet return of life. That was when we finally understood that we wanted to stay and build something of our own in this town. That is how our flower and helium-balloon delivery began.
Now we deliver fresh bouquets across Nha Trang and Cam Ranh the same day — to reception or to the room, as a surprise. We speak Russian, English and Korean, and duplicate everything on KakaoTalk for Korean guests. The town we got to know in its quietest days is alive again — and we are glad to be part of it.
