Hon Lon

Geography

Vân Phong Bay, according to Vietnamese Wikipedia, covers about 150,000 ha, of which about 80,000 ha is water and about 70,000 ha land, with a maximum length of 25 km, an entrance 17 km wide, an average depth of 22 m and a maximum depth of 25 m^[2]. Hòn Lớn is one of the islands the article names in the bay, together with Hòn Ông and Hòn Bịp^[2].

Wikidata records the island as an island in Khanh Hoa province at 12.602222, 109.363333, with an elevation of 193 m and the GeoNames identifier 1575614^[1]. The only area figure found, about 46 km², comes from a travel company's page of December 2021^[3]. If that figure is right the island is larger than Hòn Tre in Nha Trang Bay, whose area Vietnamese Wikipedia gives as 3,250 ha^[8]; no cited source calls Hòn Lớn the largest island of the bay or of the province.

Villages and residents

A report of June 2024 on the planning of the island states that there are no permanent residents on Hòn Lớn, the planned population of about 13,000 being a conversion of tourist capacity^[7]. No fetched page describes villages or lobster rafts on or around the island, so nothing is stated here about them.

The eco-tourism subzone

On 15 August 2023 the Khánh Hòa provincial People's Committee issued Decision 1929 approving the planning task for the Hòn Lớn eco-tourism subzone, subzone 1 of the Vân Phong economic zone, in Vạn Thạnh commune: a total of about 10,000 ha, of which about 4,929 ha land and about 5,071 ha sea, for a high-end eco-tourism and resort zone with a planned population of about 8,000 people converted from visitor numbers^[4]. In June 2024 the provincial People's Council approved the subzone plan at a scale of 1:2,000, with about 4,900 ha of land, and a planned population of about 13,000 for this subzone and the Khải Lương mountain resort subzone together^[7]; CafeF gives the land area as over 4,911 ha and the sea area as about 5,089 ha, and the function as a high-end eco-tourism and resort area with themed parks and entertainment^[9]. The land figures differ slightly between the 2023 task and the 2024 plan.

Administration

Vạn Ninh district, dissolved on 16 June 2025, covered 550 km² with 134,820 people in 2017 and comprised the town of Vạn Giã and 12 communes, among them Vạn Thạnh^[5]. Resolution 1667/NQ-UBTVQH15 of 16 June 2025, in force from the day it was passed, merged Vạn Thạnh, Vạn Thọ and Đại Lãnh into a new commune named Đại Lãnh, which began operating on 1 July 2025^[6]. The Vietnamese article on the bay lists the units around it after the reform as Đại Lãnh, Vạn Hưng, Vạn Ninh and Tu Bông communes, with Bắc Ninh Hòa commune and Đông Ninh Hòa ward to the south^[2].