Few travelers yet picture anything when they hear \"the sea of Da Lat.\" Until now, common sense held that Da Lat, a highland resort, has no sea. But with the provincial merger on July 1, 2025, the entire coastline of former Binh Thuan Province was folded into Lam Dong Province. On that sea, a stone lighthouse built in the French colonial era has stood for more than 120 years. It's the Ke Ga lighthouse (H\u1ea3i \u0111\u0103ng K\u00ea G\u00e0), which Dan Tri featured in late June. Combined with the Mui Ne dunes, you can build a previously impossible itinerary that ties Da Lat's cool air and the blue of the South China Sea into a single line. For Japanese travelers, it means a new detour option of \"Da Lat plus the sea\" has been added.<\/p>\n
On June 29, 2026, the major Vietnamese news site Dan Tri ran an article titled 'Exploring a lighthouse more than 120 years old in Lam Dong Province.' It featured the stone lighthouse standing on Ke Ga Cape (Mui Ke Ga), designed by a French engineer, begun in February 1897 and completed in 1899, which has kept its light burning from 1900 to this day. Locally it has drawn renewed attention as a tourism highlight, and on December 6, 2025, the Lam Dong Provincial People's Committee officially classified it as a 'provincial-level historic architectural relic.' Right after the administrative reshuffle from the provincial merger, an asset from the former Binh Thuan era was repositioned as the new province's flagship attraction.<\/p>\n
Kega Lighthouse is called \"one of Vietnam's oldest class\" because of how it was built. The tower is an octagonal column of granite shipped in from France, carved and stacked one piece at a time without adhesive, keeping the late-19th-century French architectural design intact. It was designed by a French engineer named Chnavat. The Vietnam Records Center records this lighthouse as one of the tallest in the country, citing the number of spiral steps and the reach of its light. The tower stands on a small reef called H\u00f2n B\u00e0, where plumeria planted by the French still bloom. It's also still active as a working lighthouse, a marker for ships crossing the South China Sea, which sets it apart from a mere ruin.<\/p>\n
Because the figures vary across Vietnamese-language outlets, we\u2019ve organized them around the values most widely cited on record. For the tower\u2019s height, the heritage-ranking announcement materials and Dan Tri report \u201c42.8 meters,\u201d and the spiral staircase \u201c184 steps.\u201d English-language travel guides and some encyclopedias, meanwhile, put the tower itself at about 35 meters and the height above sea level including the reef at about 65 meters. The light\u2019s reach is broadly consistent across outlets at 22 nautical miles (about 40 kilometers).<\/p>\n