Con Dao: Vietnam's Quietest Islands
Sixteen islands, a brutal prison history, nesting green turtles and almost nobody on the beach. Con Dao is the anti-Phu Quoc. Con Dao is an archipelago of sixteen islands roughly 230 kilometres off the southern coast, administratively part of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. It has the clearest water in Vietnam, a national park covering most of its land and a large area of sea, one of the region's most important green turtle nesting sites, and a history that makes it one of the most sombre places in the country. It also has, on any given day, a fraction of the visitors of Phu Quoc. The prison You should go to the prisons before you go to the beach. The French established a penal colony on Con Son island in 1862, and it operated continuously — under the French, then the Republic of Vietnam with American support — until 1975. Tens of thousands of political prisoners were held here, and a very large number died. Phu Hai and Phu Son prisons are open, and so are the tiger cages : stone cells roofed with iron bars, from which guards could look down on prisoners and pour quicklime through. Their existence was denied until American congressional aides were shown them in 1970 and the photographs ran in Life . Hang Duong cemetery holds around two thousand marked graves out of a far larger number of dead. The grave visited most is that of Vo Thi Sau, executed in 1952 at nineteen. Vietnamese visitors come at midnight to leave offerings, and the cemetery at that hour, lit by hundreds of incense…
- Published
- 2026-06-26
- Author
- Betel Editorial
