Turtle Island
Located just off Phu Quoc’s northwestern coast is Turtle Island. Around 50 metres (164ft) in length, Turtle Island is a small island that is surrounded by calm, shallow waters, no more than 10 metres (32ft) deep. These conditions have allowed smaller marine life to flourish in the coral reefs, and the water here teems with colourful creatures including stonefish, blue-ringed angelfish and yellowtail damselfish.
An Thoi Islands
For more challenging dives on Phu Quoc, head to the An Thoi Islands, a group of 15 islets off the south coast that are rated by some as the best dive site in Vietnam. Here, you can see an abundance of marine life, such as brain and fan corals, parrotfish, scorpion fish, butterfly fish and giant sea urchins. If you’re lucky, you may see a blue-spotted ray or bamboo shark, which occasionally get bought in by the current. Dive sites here vary from 5 metres (16ft) to 25 metres (82ft).
The Con Dao Archipelago
Vietnam is book-ended to the south by the unspoiled Con Dao Archipelago, a confetti-like spray of 16 emerald-green islands, cast adrift in the South China Sea some 114 miles (185km) south of Vung Tau. Unlike most other diving locations in Vietnam, Con Dao can comfortably be dived all year.
Con Dao National Park
The outlying islands of the archipelago, many of which are part of the protected Con Dao National Park, are home to over thirty excellent dive sites, where you can see some rare marine species, such as dugong, giant barracuda, dolphins and several different types of turtle.
Con Dao is also the location of the only diveable wreck in Vietnam: a steel-hulled Thai freighter, 60 metres (197ft) long which sits on the ocean floor, at a depth of around 35 metres (115ft). Schools of batfish, barracuda and fusiliers frequent the wreck, which is handsomely coated in several different corals.
Why stop at Vietnam? Read our guide to where to go for great diving in the world.
Top image: A scuba diver swims with a turtle © Rich Carey/Shutterstock