Vinh Hy Bay

Vĩnh Hy is a bay with mountains at its back and open sea at its mouth.

The records of the Department of Cultural Heritage give the meaning of the name Vĩnh Hy as a hope for thriving trade, good chances, good luck and a peaceful life. The people who named this water did not choose the name only because the place was beautiful. They wanted it to be a blessing for everyone who lived here or passed through.

The bay lies in Vĩnh Hải commune, in Khánh Hòa province as it is today. Before July 2025, this area belonged to Ninh Thuận province. After the two provinces merged, Vĩnh Hy became part of the new Khánh Hòa.

Núi Chúa National Park surrounds the bay on its inner side, and the bay opens onto the sea on its outer side. Mountains block the wind and the sea curls in, and together they make a stretch of calm, clear water that is rare along the central coast.

In 2021, UNESCO named Núi Chúa a world biosphere reserve. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. The title is not an honorary one. UNESCO describes Núi Chúa as a rare meeting of dry landscape, forest and mountains, beaches, coral reefs and nesting beaches for sea turtles. In the shallow water near the shore live more than 300 kinds of reef-building coral. A whole world lies on the seabed, only a few arm spans below the surface.

So the bay lies inside a marine ecological area that matters for conservation far beyond Vietnam.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ranked Vĩnh Hy Bay a national scenic site, in a decision dated January 7, 2020. The same heritage records say the bay once had two other names, Vũng Căng and Vũng Găng. That makes three names for one stretch of water. It must have mattered a great deal to the fishing villages, if they gave it so many names and remembered it in so many ways.

On a boat trip around the bay, the route passes a series of landmarks. Bãi Cóc, inner and outer, lie side by side, with a rock shaped like a toad. Mũi Cá Voi juts out of the water like a whale lying on its side. Small islets have names too. Two are Hòn Tai and Hòn Quy, and a third is Hòn Gan. Đá Cột Buồm looks, from far away, like a mast standing straight up. And Đá Robot is a pile of stone slabs, some laid across and some set upright, which from a distance looks like a machine.

All of these names were given by fishermen and visitors, after the shapes of the rocks. Each name is a moment when someone looked up at a cliff, saw something familiar in the wild water, and wanted to put it into their own words.

Hang Yến is a stop too. Birds called yến nest in its rock walls, and their calls and the sound of the waves blend into a sound of its own.

Near the shore, the heritage records place Lăng Thần Nam Hải, which belongs to Vĩnh Hy hamlet and covers more than 1,016 square meters. The people of the sea worship the spirit Nam Hải, and in truth they worship the whale, which they respectfully call cá Ông. Fishermen believe the whale protects people at sea from storms and rough water. This is a belief of coastal fishermen in the central region that goes back a long time, and it speaks of the deep bond between people and the sea here. In Vĩnh Hy, that belief has a proper place of worship, and is not only a story told by mouth.

From the boat, the water is so clear that every reef shows below, its colors spread out like an enormous carpet that only the sea of Vĩnh Hy could weave. And somewhere in the cliffs the yến still call, and the waves still beat, as if this bay had never needed anyone to know it in order to exist.