Khanh Vinh /Culture and history
The Raglai were 49 percent of Khanh Vinh's people at the 2009 census and 73.4 percent of Khanh Son's in 2024. Khanh Vinh has no community tourism village yet, only plans; what you can visit is the Yang Bay stage show, the pomelo orchards and, over the mountain in Khanh Son, the Hon Dung longhouse village launched in June 2025. My etiquette rules are my own.
The Raglai are the people of the two mountain districts, and in Khánh Vĩnh there is, as of September 2026, no village set up for visitors: the district’s plan of October 2024 promised at least three community tourism villages by 2025, and I have not found one open. What is for sale in Khanh Vinh is a stage performance inside Yang Bay park, farm parks along the road to the pass, and green-skin pomelo at the farm gate. The one Raglai village that does take visitors, Hòn Dung, is over the mountains in Khánh Sơn and opened in June 2025.
What is polite is harder, because I could not find a published etiquette guide for Raglai villages anywhere, and the one official culture page I tried loaded empty. So the second half of this post is my own practice, labelled as such. Nothing here is a story about a family I met, because I would not put one in print.
An Austronesian people of the Malayo-Polynesian branch, which puts their language in the same family as Cham and Malay, not Vietnamese. The 2019 census counted 146,613 Raglai in Vietnam, up from 122,245 in 2009 and 96,931 in 1999. In 2009, 58,911 lived in the former Ninh Thuận and 45,915 in Khanh Hoa, over three quarters of those in the former Khanh Son and Khanh Vinh districts. Those are 48.2 and 37.6 percent of every Raglai counted that year, so since the two provinces merged on 1 July 2025 roughly 86 percent of them, on the 2009 figures, live in one province.
Kinship is matrilineal: daughters inherit the property and look after aged parents. The traditional house is a stilt house with a low floor; the last traditional longhouse (nhà dài) in Khanh Son stands at Hon Dung in Sơn Hiệp. The music is built on mã la gong sets, the Chapi bamboo tube zither, the kèn môi mouth harp and, historically, the stone lithophone, which has its own post on the stone lithophone of Khanh Son.
| Figure | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Raglai in Vietnam | 96,931 | 1999 census |
| Raglai in Vietnam | 122,245 | 2009 census |
| Raglai in Vietnam | 146,613 | 2019 census |
| In Khanh Hoa | 45,915 (37.6 percent of all Raglai) | 2009 census |
| Share of Khanh Vinh’s population | 49 percent (16,297 people), the source rounding up 48.3 | 2009 census |
| Share of Khanh Son’s population | 73.4 percent | 2024, provincial party site |
The largest and emptiest district in the old province: 1,165 km2, 33,714 people at the 2009 census, about 29 per square kilometre, three quarters forest, rising to Hòn Giao at 2,062 m. The Raglai were 49 percent, Kinh about 27.5 percent and Cơ Ho 14 percent, with Ê Đê, Tày, Nùng and Mường minorities and, in Báo Khánh Hòa’s list, the T’rin. Since 1 July 2025 the district is five communes: Khanh Vinh, Bắc, Trung, Tây and Nam Khánh Vĩnh.
What you see from QL27C is orchards, acacia, a river with cattle standing in it, and villages of concrete and timber houses set back from the road, with the older stilt houses in the side valleys. The streams Bao Khanh Hoa listed in October 2024 are Yang Bay in Khánh Phú, Suối Mấu in Khánh Thượng, Ê Đu in Giang Ly, Zi-ông in Khánh Trung and Salawen in Khánh Hiệp, plus a hot spring at Khánh Thành; the working tourism sites were Yang Bay park, Hoa Quả Sơn farm in Khanh Trung, Tiên Long Farm in Khanh Phu and a farming co-operative at Cầu Bà. None of those is a Raglai village.
Three things, honestly priced. First, the Raglai performance inside Yang Bay park at 10:45 daily, included in the 200,000 VND ticket (2026): gongs and dance on a stage, well done, and a show rather than a visit. Second, green-skin pomelo, the district’s signature crop: about 600 ha planted across the five communes, about 330 ha of it bearing in July 2025, picked from late July and sold at 20,000 to 40,000 VND a kilo at the farm gate. Buying a pomelo from a roadside table is the most ordinary contact you will have, and the best.
Third, over the mountain: Hon Dung community tourism village in Son Hiep, Khanh Son, recognised by the province in early 2025 and launched on 18 June 2025. It has the longhouse, a lithophone set, two performance groups of 15, rượu cần rice wine, chicken grilled in bamboo tubes, basket weaving, crossbow making and forest walks, and a target of at least 5,000 visitors a year. No named homestay with a price appears in any source I could fetch, so book through an operator or ask in Tô Hạp. It is the same trip as Khanh Son in durian season, and August is when I would combine them.
I looked for a published guide and found none, so these are mine, formed over two years of riding through and from the one warning the heritage sources do give: the bỏ mả grave-leaving ceremony, three days long and on the national intangible heritage list, is a family funeral rite, attended only by invitation.
Field note: the pomelo tables appear on the Khanh Phu stretch of QL27C from late July. The fruit is heavy, the skin is green, and the seller will tell you which one is ready today. Take that one.
An Austronesian people of the Malayo-Polynesian branch, matrilineal, numbering 146,613 in Vietnam at the 2019 census. In 2009, 45,915 lived in Khanh Hoa, mostly in the former Khanh Son and Khanh Vinh districts.
In Khanh Vinh, no organised one as of September 2026. Hon Dung community village in Khanh Son, launched on 18 June 2025, has the last traditional longhouse, a lithophone set and performance groups, about 100 km from Nha Trang via Cam Ranh.
I found none in a published source. The district planned at least three community tourism villages by 2025; nothing named with a price had appeared on a page I could fetch by September 2026.
No published guide exists that I could find. My own rules: buy at the price asked, ask before any photograph, stay on the road unless invited or with a guide, and never ask to attend a bo ma funeral rite.
Picking starts in late July, with about 330 ha of the district's 600 ha bearing in July 2025. Farm-gate prices averaged 20,000 to 40,000 VND a kilo.
Read on 15 September 2026. Prices, hours and rules change; these are the pages the figures came from.
The dan da Khanh Son is 12 tuned bars of rhyolite porphyry, in two groups of six, found by the family of Bo Bo Ren, a Raglai man, at Doc Gao near To Hap in the late 1970s and dated to about 2,500 to 3,000 years. A national treasure since 2024, it is kept in the provincial museum in Nha Trang; to hear stone played, go to Hon Dung village in Khanh Son.
Go in August. Khanh Son's durian harvest runs from about July to the end of August and peaks in August, a month before the Central Highlands, on over 3,800 ha forecast to give 40,000 to 41,000 tonnes in 2026. It is 100 km from Nha Trang by the one road in, over a 600 m pass from Ba Ngoi in Cam Ranh, and I would stay the night.
Hon Ba is the 1,578 m mountain south-west of Nha Trang where Alexandre Yersin built a research station in 1915 and where Tuoi Tre measured 17 to 20 degrees in June 2024. Since a pilot scheme at Tet 2024 the summit is reached with an organised tour, not independently, and I found no 2025 or 2026 statement on whether the 37 km summit road is open.
Van Phong is Khanh Hoa's largest bay and its least visited: 150,000 hectares between the Hon Khoi headland and the Hon Gom sandbar, 60 km north of Nha Trang, with a 17 km mouth, 20 to 27 m deep. The depth drew a port that never got built; the shelter holds about 35,000 lobster cages. For a visitor it means Diep Son, Mui Doi, Whale Island and Doc Let.
