China Beach

Thanks to the eponymous 1980s TV series, China Beach will forever be associated with pretty young military nurses complaining about their love lives to the accompaniment of the Rolling Stones' Paint It Black. During the war the Americans used the name to refer to the beautiful 30km swoop of fine white sand that starts at Monkey Mountain and finishes near Hoi An, with the Marble Mountains near its centre. The part they were most familiar with was the area close to Danang where soldiers stationed all over the country would be sent for some R&R. For some, a picnic on the beach was their last meal before their return to combat by helicopter. The Vietnamese call sections of the beach by different names, including My Khe, My An, Non Nuoc and Cua Dai. In the last decade a clever entrepreneur cashing in on the TV series started calling the area in front of his hotel China Beach - although it's considerably south of where the Americans hung out, While My Khe is now basically a suburb of Danang and Cua Dai is widely considered Hoi An's beach

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