Topic
Cham towers, a Vauban citadel, salt, memorials, and the people who were here first.
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.
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.
The working side of Cam Ranh bay is a morning on a motorbike: Ba Ngoi market before eight, when the boats have landed; the salt pans south of the town while the light is low; the lobster rafts seen from the road out to Binh Lap; and a lunch you price by the kilo before it is cooked. No boat, no island, and no camera pointed at the navy.
At five in the morning Nha Trang is the town its residents use: exercise groups in the sea by half past five, fishing boats landing under the Xom Bong bridge below the Po Nagar towers, Dam and Xom Moi markets trading from five, and the first coffee on the pavement. By nine it has handed itself back to the hotels. Set one alarm.
Khanh Hoa was Cham country called Kauthara, became Vietnamese in 1653, was named Khanh Hoa in 1832, was made a base by three navies in turn, was joined with Phu Yen from 1975 to 1989 and absorbed Ninh Thuan in 2025. Twelve dates, each with a place you can stand in this week, from the Po Nagar towers to the Gac Ma memorial.
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.
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.
Am Chua is the shrine on Dai An hill north of Dien Khanh town where local tradition, recorded on an 1856 stele at the Po Nagar towers, places the childhood of Thien Y A Na, the goddess of the province. More than a hundred stone steps, no fee I ever found, and a festival on the first three days of the third lunar month: 17 to 19 April in 2026.
The towers, the pottery village and the weaving village sit within about 12 km of central Phan Rang, so one motorbike day covers all three: Po Klong Garai when it opens at 07:30, Bau Truc late morning while the potters are working, My Nghiep after. The only ticket is at the towers, a travel-site figure of 20,000 VND in 2026.
The Hon Khoi salt fields are about 400 hectares of evaporation pans on the flats behind Doc Let beach, roughly a kilometre from the sand. Salt is made from March to September, most of it from April to July, and the first shift is on the pans from 04:00 to 09:00 because the brine must be spread before the sun. Go at first light in those months.
Dien Khanh's citadel is a 1793 Vauban-style fort ten kilometres west of Nha Trang, with four of its six gates standing on the town's streets. In September 2026 the restoration begun in early 2025 was about 75 percent done and due to finish by 31 October 2026, so expect works. I have never found a fee or opening hours.
The memorial on the Bai Dai boulevard commemorates the 64 Vietnamese sailors killed at Gac Ma reef on 14 March 1988. It is free, sober and worth an hour on the way to the airport. The reef lies in Truong Sa, a special zone of Khanh Hoa since 2025 that no ordinary traveller can reach; the hall beneath the memorial is as close as you get.
Since 1 July 2025 Ninh Thuan is the south of Khanh Hoa, there are no districts or provincial cities, and 194 communes, wards and towns became 65. Streets kept their names and numbers, plates 79 and 85 are both valid, and old addresses still work. This is the page that keeps the dates and the new ward names straight.
