Hầm Hô in February 2024. Photo: Uranus2808, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The water is clear enough to see the bottom, and granite boulders crowd the channel. Hầm Hô is where a river in central Vietnam turns into a run of small falls and pools.

The Kút is a tributary of the Kôn River, and at Hầm Hô it squeezes through forest, dropping over small falls into pools and winding between rounded granite blocks. How long the scenic stretch runs depends on whom you ask; the rocks are the main event. One flat slab is known as the chessboard rock.

The usual way in is by thuyền thúng, the round woven basket boat. Visitors also wade and swim in the pools, and the photo above shows a sandy shore where people picnic under a small pavilion.

The site’s other name is Cá Bay, “flying fish”. Travel writers say that in the rainy season fish swimming upstream are thrown up by the falls and appear to fly. Vietnamese Wikipedia adds that the area served as a base for the Tây Sơn rebels and, later, for Cần Vương fighters resisting the French. That is all the history we could confirm; anything more specific is local tradition we could not source.

Where it is: Hầm Hô lies in the former Tây Phú commune, about 4 km from Phú Phong town and roughly 50 km northwest of Quy Nhơn. Tây Sơn district was dissolved on 1 July 2025, and Tây Phú merged with two neighbouring communes into Bình Phú, which now sits in Gia Lai province after Bình Định was merged into it. Older maps and guides still say Tây Sơn district, Bình Định province.