Hon Yen Island

At Hòn Yến, the beauty lies beneath clear water, in the lives of small creatures that most visitors overlook. Some scenic places show their beauty on the surface, in color, light and shape. This is not one of them.

Before the administrative reorganization of 2025, the group of islets belonged to An Hòa Hải commune, in Phú Yên province. Afterward, the fishing village of Nhơn Hội and the island came under Ô Loan commune. That commune is in Đắk Lắk province. The group is ranked as a national scenic site, under Decision 5387 of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Many people hear the name Hòn Yến and picture one lone island. In fact it is a whole group. Local sources describe the group as Hòn Yến itself and Hòn Đụn. Hòn Đụn is also called Hòn Sắt. The group also takes in Bàn Than and Gành Yến. The last two parts are Hòn Choi and Vũng Choi. Hòn Yến is the most striking of them. It lies about 400 meters from shore, covers nearly 2 hectares, and rises about 70 meters. Hòn Đụn is smaller, about 50 meters closer to the shore than Hòn Yến, and about 20 meters high. The pair stands out clearly from the shore at Nhơn Hội, and this view is the most familiar image of Hòn Yến in photographs.

As for the rock, the former Phú Yên Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism explains that the area formed from volcanic activity along the coast. Lava met seawater and made basalt in columns or in blocks, like the basalt at Gành Đá Đĩa. Anyone who has seen Gành Đá Đĩa will recognize something familiar in the stone here, though the setting and the look are different.

What sets Hòn Yến apart is its life in the water and along the shore. A survey by the Vietnam-Russia Tropical Center in 2022 recorded 22 species of coral in 7 families. It also recorded 3 species of seagrass and 7 species of seaweed. The coral here is living coral, a reef close to shore in shallow water. When the tide runs very low, the rocky flats and the reef near the shore can show above the water, and the scene is a very special one. This is also when the risk to conservation is highest.

Yến is the Vietnamese word for swiftlet. According to the elders of the area, as recorded by the former Phú Yên department, swiftlets once nested on the cliffs of the little island, and that is how Hòn Yến got its name. This is a popular local account, not the result of a formal study of birds. But it is a lovely story, and it shows how long and how closely the local people have felt tied to their island.

Hòn Yến is tied to the life of the Nhơn Hội fishing village too. The people here work the sea. They raise lobster, catch fish and other seafood, harvest swiftlet nests and weave nets. In the village stands the Tomb of Ông Nam Hải, where fishermen of the central coast worship the god Nam Hải. Ông Nam Hải is the whale, honored by coastal fishing communities as a guardian of people who work at sea. Among the basket boats and the fishing boats of Nhơn Hội, it becomes clear that Hòn Yến is not only scenery for photographs. It is where a community lives and works.

The closest way to feel Hòn Yến is not to look from the shore, but to sit in a basket boat while small waves carry you around the cliffs. There the water changes from jade green to deep blue as the sea floor drops. Black basalt walls rise straight up from the water. Somewhere in the clear water below the island, some two dozen kinds of coral are growing quietly, as they did long before anyone gave the island a name.