Cam Ranh

Name

Vietnamese sources trace Cam Ranh to Kăm Ranh, a phrase from the Ê Đê, Cham or Jarai languages in which kăm means a gathering place or wharf and ranh, or m'ran, means a boat, together giving the sense of a boat wharf, a description that fits a city built around one of the best natural anchorages on the Vietnamese coast^[1].

Administrative history

Before 2000 the built-up centre of the area was the market town of Ba Ngòi. Decree 21/2000/NĐ-CP of 7 July 2000 dissolved Ba Ngòi township and raised the area to a provincial town, splitting the old town centre into the six wards of Ba Ngòi, Cam Linh, Cam Lộc, Cam Lợi, Cam Phú and Cam Thuận^[1]. Resolution 65/NQ-CP of 23 December 2010 raised the town to a provincial city^[1].

Decree 65/2007/NĐ-CP of 11 April 2007 adjusted the boundary between Cam Ranh town and Diên Khánh district to create the new Cam Lâm district to the north^[9]. Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15, adopted on 16 June 2025, abolished the city along with every other district-level unit in the reorganised Khánh Hòa province, and its successor wards and commune began operating on 1 July 2025^[3].

Geography

Cam Ranh lies on the south-east coast of Khánh Hòa, bordered by Cam Lâm district to the north, the East Sea to the east, Thuận Bắc district of the former Ninh Thuận province to the south, and Bác Ái district of the former Ninh Thuận and Khánh Sơn district to the west^[1]. It is 45 km south of Nha Trang^[4]; Wikidata places the city centre at 11.9136 north and 109.1369 east^[5].

The city is built around Cam Ranh Bay, a deep, sheltered inlet on the province's south coast, and Cam Ranh International Airport lies within Bắc Cam Ranh ward, in the north of the city^[7].

Population

Statoids gives an estimate of 213,356 people on 687 km² for 2003, before the 2007 transfer of territory to Cam Lâm reduced the city's area^[2]. The census of 1 April 2019 counted 138,510 people on 316 km², a density of 438 per km²^[1][4]; a 2024 estimate puts the population at 134,100^[4].

Wards and communes

Before 2025 the city had nine wards, Ba Ngòi, Cam Linh, Cam Lộc, Cam Lợi, Cam Nghĩa, Cam Phú, Cam Phúc Bắc, Cam Phúc Nam and Cam Thuận, and six communes, Cam Bình, Cam Lập, Cam Phước Đông, Cam Thành Nam, Cam Thịnh Đông and Cam Thịnh Tây^[1].

Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15 regrouped these fifteen units into four wards and one commune, listed in items 1 and 53 to 56 of its first article^[3].

Naval base and airport

Cam Ranh Bay has been used as a naval anchorage since the French colonial period; Imperial Japanese forces used it in 1942 in preparing operations against British Malaya and Borneo, and in January 1945 a United States Navy carrier task force destroyed most of the Japanese facilities there in an action called Operation Gratitude^[6]. United States forces surveyed the bay in 1964 and built the base up from 1965, completing a runway on 16 October 1965 and establishing a Naval Air Facility in April 1967, before handing it to the South Vietnamese government in May 1972; North Vietnamese forces took it on 3 April 1975^[6].

The Soviet Union leased the base for 25 years, from 1979 according to the English article^[6] and from 1978 according to Vietnamese Wikipedia^[10], expanding it to four times its original size by 1987, and returned it to sole Vietnamese control on 2 May 2002, ahead of the lease's scheduled 2004 expiry^[6]. A 2004 expiry follows from the English article's own 1979 start; the Vietnamese date of 1978 would put the expiry in 2003, and no source gives that. It now serves as the headquarters of a regional command of the Vietnam People's Navy and hosts the country's only submarine base^[6]. Cam Ranh International Airport, within Bắc Cam Ranh ward, took its first civilian flight on 19 May 2004 and was designated an international airport on 16 August 2007; its second terminal, opened on 30 June 2018, added 50,500 m² of floor space, and the airport handled 10,000,000 passengers in 2019^[7].

Economy

Cam Ranh Bay is one of Vietnam's leading lobster farming grounds. In February 2025 the provincial paper Báo Khánh Hòa reported close to 100,000 farming cages in the province, of which the bay accounted for more than 70 percent, with an annual output above 3,000 tonnes^[8]. Shipbuilding, cement production and the processing of farm and aquatic products are also named among the city's industries by Vietnamese Wikipedia, which records an export value of about 30 million US dollars in 2008^[1].