Alexandre Yersin Museum Nha Trang

The museum is inside the grounds of the Pasteur Institute at 06–08–10 Trần Phú, and keeps the working room and belongings of Alexandre Yersin, who founded the institute in 1895. To be clear from the start: the museum is what you visit. The Pasteur Institute itself is a working research body, not a sight.

Yersin is why Nha Trang has a museum named after a Frenchman. He identified the bacterium behind bubonic plague: Yersinia pestis carries his name, and then chose Nha Trang as the place to live and work for most of his life. He died on 1 March 1943 and is buried at Suối Dầu in Cam Lâm, some way outside the city.

Sources disagree on hours and price: some give Monday to Friday 8:00–12:00 and 14:00–16:30, others Monday to Saturday morning, 7:30–11:30 and 14:00–17:00. Admission is quoted anywhere from 20,000₫ to 26,000₫. What every source agrees on is that it closes on Sundays and public holidays, so if your day depends on this, phone ahead.

This is a small museum inside a working institution rather than a large exhibition. Half an hour covers it. In exchange it is right on Trần Phú, walkable from most beachfront hotels, and fits into a morning that already has something else in the centre.

If the museum leaves you curious, the rest of the story sits 30 km away: Yersin built a working house on the summit of Hon Ba at 1,578 m, to do research and grow medicinal plants in a cool climate. The wooden house is still there, and the sign at the top gives the year as 1903. The way up is 37 km of mountain road, so that is a day of its own rather than an addition to this morning.

In the same group: the Oceanographic Institute and Bảo Đại villas. All three work in the rain.