Central CoastDuyên hải miền Trung

From about the 2nd to the 15th century the coast from Huế to Phan Thiết belonged to the Cham, an Austronesian people whose kingdoms traded across the Indian Ocean and adopted Hinduism and later Islam. Their brick temple towers still stand at Mỹ Sơn, Nha Trang (Po Nagar), Quy Nhơn and Phan Rang.

Vietnamese expansion southward absorbed Champa step by step; the last Cham principality ended in the 1830s. Cham communities remain around Phan Rang and in the Mekong Delta near Châu Đốc.

The Nguyễn lords ruled the south from the 1600s; in 1802 Gia Long unified the country and built a new capital at Huế, laid out by geomancy between the Perfume River and the mountains. Thirteen emperors reigned until Bảo Đại's abdication in 1945.

The tombs of the emperors, each designed as a landscape of lakes and pavilions, are the most personal legacy of the dynasty. War damage in 1947 and 1968 destroyed much of the Imperial City; restoration continues.

Hội An was the port where Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch ships met under the Nguyễn lords in the 16th–18th centuries. Chinese merchant communities built assembly halls that still line Trần Phú street; the Japanese left the Covered Bridge.

When the river silted up, trade moved to Đà Nẵng, which the French later made their concession of Tourane. Hội An's decline preserved it; Đà Nẵng's rise made it the region's modern city and airport.

The 17th parallel, the line dividing North and South from 1954, crossed the coast north of Huế. The DMZ around it saw some of the war's heaviest fighting; villagers at Vịnh Mốc lived underground for years. In 1968 the Tết Offensive turned Huế into a month-long urban battle.

Unexploded ordnance still affects rural Quảng Trị: clearance groups work across the province, and visitors should keep to paths at war sites.

The central coast gets its heaviest rain from September to December, when the north-east monsoon and typhoons hit the mountains that rise close to the sea. Huế is one of the wettest cities in Vietnam; Hội An's old town floods most Octobers and Novembers.

From February to August the coast is dry and increasingly hot — the beach season in Đà Nẵng and Hội An. Plan with that calendar, and build a spare day into any autumn trip.