Phuoc Hai Beach and Fish Market: Times, Seafood Prices, Getting There

Phuoc Hai is a working fishing village and beach on the coast east of Ho Chi Minh City, about 92 km by road from the city centre and roughly two hours by car. It sits at the foot of Minh Dam mountain, between Long Hai and Ho Tram, in what was Dat Do district of Ba Ria–Vung Tau province and is now Phuoc Hai commune, Ho Chi Minh City. People come to watch the round basket boats land their catch on the sand in the morning, buy from the fish market across the road, and eat on the seawall seafood street in the evening. The swimming is secondary: we found no official notice of lifeguard hours or warning flags for Phuoc Hai, so judge the sea on the day.

Where is Phuoc Hai beach?

Phuoc Hai is on the south-east coast, past the Long Hai headland, where the Minh Dam range comes down to the sea. Coming from Long Hai you cross Deo Nuoc Ngot, a short rocky pass that marks the boundary between the two communes, and the fishing beach opens out on the other side. The village has fished this shore for more than 100 years, according to Tuoi Tre, VTC News and Nguoi Lao Dong.

The address has changed twice recently, which confuses maps and booking sites. In January 2025 Phuoc Hai township absorbed Long My commune, and Dat Do district was merged into a new Long Dat district. Then, under resolution 1685 of the National Assembly Standing Committee, dated 16 June 2025, the township and neighbouring Phuoc Hoi commune were merged into a new Phuoc Hai commune (commune website). It has been part of Ho Chi Minh City since Ba Ria–Vung Tau was merged into the city on 1 July 2025. Older guides still say “Dat Do, Vung Tau”. It is the same place.

How to get to Phuoc Hai from Ho Chi Minh City and Vung Tau

By car, the usual route from central Ho Chi Minh City is the Ho Chi Minh City–Long Thanh–Dau Giay expressway, then National Highway 51 to Ba Ria, then the provincial road through Long Hai and over Deo Nuoc Ngot. Measured on OpenStreetMap from Ben Thanh Market, that is about 92 km. Press reports round it to about 100 km and about two hours by car; vloggers driving on weekdays report 1.5 to 2 hours, with queues on the Long Thanh section at weekends.

Since 18 May 2026 there is a second option. The Bien Hoa–Vung Tau expressway opened along its full 54 km that afternoon, from Phuoc Tan in Dong Nai to the National Highway 56 roundabout in Tam Long ward (Tien Phong). At the opening, Tien Phong reported that during the temporary operation only vehicles with fewer than nine seats could use it, at 60–80 km/h, so coaches stayed on QL51; check whether that limit still applies before you go. In visitors’ videos, drivers use it to skip the truck traffic on QL51.

Without a car, several van and limousine operators run from Ho Chi Minh City to Long Hai and Phuoc Hai; fares differ by company, so check when you book. If you are based in Vung Tau, Phuoc Hai is about 31 km from the Back Beach by road, a sensible half-day or evening trip. Our guide to getting from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau covers the first leg.

Phuoc Hai fish market: what time should you go?

Go between about 7 and 10 am. The basket boats, called thung, go out around 3 to 4 am and fish close to the shore. VTC News reported the first boats coming in at about 7:20 am in May 2026; Nguoi Lao Dong and SGGP, reporting in November 2025, put the first landings at about 8:30 am, with rows of boats on the sand by 9 am. Visitors’ videos match that window: most boats land between 7 and 9 am, and the market stays busiest until about 10 am.

Arrive at 5 or 6 am and you may watch an empty beach. Arrive at noon and the best of the catch has gone. There is no real afternoon fish market at Phuoc Hai, despite what some travel blogs say. In visitors’ videos locals send afternoon shoppers to the Phuoc Hoi market inland instead.

Two scenes run at once. On the sand, families unload nets straight from the thung while small tractors drag the boats up the beach, and buyers, tourists included, bargain over the catch on the spot. Nguoi Lao Dong, quoting local officials, counted 285 motorised basket boats in the commune in late 2025. Across the road, Phuoc Hai market on Vo Thi Sau street has a fish hall at the back, behind the clothes and food stalls, and a lane where fishing families sell their own catch. In visitors’ videos, sellers on the sand want cash, and weekends, public holidays and full-moon days are much busier, with traffic backing up into town.

Seafood prices at Phuoc Hai market

Prices move with the size of the animal and the weather. When the sea is rough, fewer boats go out and prices rise, a pattern six of the channels that filmed the market point out. These ranges come from prices heard on camera in 2025–2026 at Phuoc Hai, checked against a dated price list from a local travel site:

Milk oysters (hau sua) in the shell: about 30,000–50,000 VND/kg; VietNamNet quotes 35,000 VND/kg. Blue swimmer crab (ghe): roughly 350,000–550,000 VND/kg for large ones, up to about 600,000 VND for the best roe crabs, and 100,000–300,000 VND for small crabs or ones bought straight off a boat. Squid: roughly 200,000–380,000 VND/kg, live leaf squid at the top. Tiger prawns: roughly 260,000–460,000 VND/kg. Grouper: about 220,000–280,000 VND/kg. Cobia: about 160,000–300,000 VND/kg. Babylon snails (oc huong): about 300,000–600,000 VND/kg depending on size. The market is also known for fried mackerel fish cake (cha ca thu), about 150,000–160,000 VND/kg in 2026 videos.

Bargaining is normal, and opening prices vary from stall to stall, so walk the hall once before you buy. Ask the price per kilo, watch the scale, and agree the total before anything is cleaned.

Can you get your seafood cooked at the market?

Yes. Stalls in front of the market and on the beach steam or boil what you have bought for about 25,000–30,000 VND per kilo, according to six channels that filmed it, and some cook more elaborate dishes for more. Vendors will also gut fish and clean squid. If you are taking seafood back to Ho Chi Minh City, stalls pack it in styrofoam boxes with ice; none of the videos shows what that costs, so ask first.

For breakfast, the market and the lanes around it sell bowls of banh canh with fish cake for about 25,000–30,000 VND, and plates of about ten small banh khot or banh can pancakes for the same.

The seawall seafood street on Tran Hung Dao

In the evening the action moves to the seawall. Tran Hung Dao street runs along the top of the embankment, its wall painted with murals, and is lined with seafood restaurants for a kilometre or more. In visitors’ videos it is quiet in the morning, opens up around 5 pm and is busiest between about 5:30 and 7 pm.

Milk oysters are the thing to order. On posted menus filmed by visitors, a basin of steamed oysters, about a kilo, costs 35,000–40,000 VND, and you open them yourself with the knife provided; Tuoi Tre gives the same 35,000 VND a kilo. Grilled oysters with scallion oil or cheese run 40,000–100,000 VND a plate, most often about 60,000. At weekends and on holidays the street jams and parking is chaotic; in visitors’ videos, weekday evenings are quiet.

Phuoc Hai beach: sand, waves and swimming

The beach is long and sandy, and at low tide, according to the national tourism administration’s site, the sand runs on towards Long Hai. In front of the village it is a working beach: boats, nets, tractor tracks and, in the afternoons and at weekends, giant kites flown over the square. Visitors’ videos show it mostly clean, with bins along the sand, though rubbish collects at the ends of the seawall on rough days. Umbrellas and chairs can be rented on the sand.

Three things in visitors’ videos matter for swimming. The water gets deep only a few steps out from the fishing beach, more steeply than at Vung Tau’s Back Beach. The tide moves a long way, leaving a wide flat at low water and bringing bigger waves at high water. And the wind usually rises during the day, so mornings are calmer than afternoons. Local people swim early, often before 7 am.

Is it safe to swim at Phuoc Hai?

We found no official notice for Phuoc Hai that sets out lifeguard hours, a flag system or a buoyed bathing area. Visitors’ videos show signposted public bathing areas, one marked “Phuoc Hai 1”, and two channels (fewer than our usual three) filmed a lifeguard post with a watchtower on the public beach. Across the 46 visitors’ channels we went through (their spoken commentary, not every frame), nobody mentions red flags or buoy lines. Plenty of those videos show calm mornings too, so judge the sea on the day.

We found two press accounts of trouble in the water on this coast, both several years old. In a reader’s account published by VnExpress in April 2014, a woman who could not swim stepped into a deep hollow off the Phuoc Hai fishing beach in rough surf and was pulled out by a fisherman and a local man; locals told her people had drowned at such spots before. About 9 km back along the coast at Long Hai, five nuns went into the sea early on 22 February 2018 although warning flags were up on that beach; one died and two were still missing when Tuoi Tre News reported it the next day. Our search of Vietnamese newspapers found no reported sea drowning at Phuoc Hai from 2023 to 2026; that is the limit of what we found, not a safety rating. In visitors’ videos, the rocky Deo Nuoc Ngot pass between Long Hai and Phuoc Hai is a photo stop, not a place to swim.

Given what the videos show, swim in the morning before the wind gets up, near other people, and where you can stand; at the fishing beach that means staying close in, because the bottom drops quickly, and staying out at high tide on a rough day. For general advice, the head of Da Nang’s beach management board told SGGP in May 2024 not to swim where there is no breaking white water, because that is where currents run out to sea, and said children should wear a life jacket and be with an adult.

Phuoc Hai, Long Hai or Ho Tram?

They are three stops on one coast road. Long Hai comes first from Ba Ria, about 9–10 km before Phuoc Hai. It is where Dinh Co stands, the shrine below Thuy Van hill whose festival on the 12th day of the second lunar month is a national intangible heritage; the 2026 festival ran from 27 to 30 March and drew more than 378,000 visitors (SGGP). The legend, as recorded by the Ba Ria–Vung Tau provincial museum, links the two places: the girl honoured at Dinh Co drowned off this coast at 16, and it was fishermen from Phuoc Hai who buried her.

Ho Tram is about 21 km further along the coast. In visitors’ videos the coast road there is lined with resorts that hide the beach from the road. Phuoc Hai is the one with a working basket-boat beach, a morning fish market and a cheap seafood street. If that is what you came for, base yourself here; if you want a resort pool and a quiet private beach, look further along. For other beaches in the area, see our Vung Tau attractions and our Vung Tau Beach guide.

In Phuoc Hai, the national tourism administration lists Lang Ong, the whale temple, and the nearby whale graveyard, where VietnamPlus reports whale skeletons on display. Nearby, the Minh Dam relic site on the mountain above the village (Tuoi Tre) and Truc Lam Chan Nguyen Zen monastery are common side trips in visitors’ videos. On Minh Dam, Tuoi Tre warns, do not feed or tease the monkeys.

When is the best time to visit Phuoc Hai?

Plan by the day of the week and the hour rather than the month. Rough days turn up in every season in visitors’ videos, and in November 2025 Nguoi Lao Dong found the wind on the fishing beach strong enough to blow sand in people’s faces. What is predictable is the crowd. Weekdays are quiet and mostly local; weekends, public holidays and full-moon days bring traffic queues, a packed market and a full seawall. Go on a weekday, reach the beach by 7 am, swim before the wind rises, eat on the seawall around 5 pm and you have seen Phuoc Hai at its best.

Simple guesthouses near the beach cost a few hundred thousand dong a night, according to Thanh Nien (2023) and Tuoi Tre (2025), and fill up at weekends.

Staying at a resort in Phuoc Hai

If you would rather have the beach without the bustle, our Phuoc Hai Beach Honeymoon Tour is a two-day, one-night stay at Lan Rung Resort in Phuoc Hai, with a deluxe room overlooking the sea or garden and the resort’s own stretch of sand. Transfers to and from Phuoc Hai are not included.

Phuoc Hai Beach Honeymoon Tour

2 days 1 night

Start from:  $246 /person

FAQ

Sources: Phuoc Hai commune website on the 2025 merger; Vietnam National Authority of Tourism on Phuoc Hai beach; Ba Ria–Vung Tau provincial museum on the Dinh Co festival; VTC News (May 2026); VietnamPlus (July 2026); Nguoi Lao Dong (November 2025); SGGP on the basket-boat fishermen (November 2025); Tuoi Tre Muc Tim (July 2025); VietNamNet (2025); Thanh Nien (August 2023); Tien Phong on the Bien Hoa–Vung Tau expressway (May 2026); VnExpress reader’s account (April 2014); Tuoi Tre News on the Long Hai drowning (February 2018); SGGP on drowning prevention (May 2024); SGGP on the 2026 Dinh Co festival; market price list from ghienvungtau (April 2026); distances measured on OpenStreetMap; visitor observations from 46 YouTube channels (2023–2026), used only where three or more channels agree. Featured photo: Ninh Tien Dat / Pexels; banner photo: Quan TRAN / Pexels, cropped.