Hon Mun Island Nha Trang

Swimming and diving around Hòn Mun are suspended, and have been since 27 June 2022. The Nha Trang Bay management board halted “swimming and diving at every dive point around Hòn Mun island”, and nothing has reopened it. The board's own mid-2024 review added boats and glass-bottom coracles to the suspension, and as of July 2026 the strictly protected zone was still closed to swimming and diving. Almost every page selling a “2026 Hòn Mun diving tour” omits this.

The reason is the coral. Typhoon No. 9 in December 2021 tore up the western and north-western reef, a bleaching event followed, and the province stopped tourism here to let it recover on its own. Reef-building hard coral grows about one centimetre a year, so the word “temporary” in that notice has now covered four years, and there is no reason to expect it to end soon. The closure has worked: surveys in late 2022 and March 2023 put live coral cover on the north and south-west of the island at about 74.5%, which is inside the good band.

If a tour still sells “snorkelling the Hòn Mun reef”, ask one question: where exactly do guests get into the water. In June 2024 Khánh Hoà approved a trial of recreational diving at four areas in the bay, and Hòn Mun is not one of them: north of Hòn Rùa, the artificial reef off Vĩnh Hoà, north-east of Trí Nguyên island, and the water between Bãi Tranh and Bãi Sỏi. Those four are the permitted ones. A dive anywhere else is an arrangement between you and the seller, not a licensed service.

One thing I could not settle, said out loud rather than hidden: whether tour boats still stop in the water around the island. The notices cover swimming, diving and glass-bottom coracles, not passing traffic, and plenty of itineraries still print the name. So the question to ask when booking is not “does it call at Hòn Mun” — it may well do — but “where do we get into the water”.

If what you want is to see coral, that still exists — just not here. Diving in Nha Trang lists the dive centres and what to ask before booking; the shared three- and four-island tour is the full day on the water. For an island day with everything laid on, Hòn Tằm; for a working fishing village, Bích Đầm.