Con Dao

The archipelago appears on old European charts as Pulo Condore, a landmark for ships crossing the South China Sea, and the English East India Company held a short-lived post on Côn Sơn in the early 18th century before it was destroyed. Vietnamese fishermen used the islands seasonally, and Nguyễn Ánh, later the emperor Gia Long, promised them to France in the Treaty of Versailles of 1787 in return for military help.

France took the islands by conquest in 1861 and began building a penal colony there the same year, using the islands' isolation as the wall. Over the following century Côn Đảo held political prisoners of every generation of Vietnamese resistance: anti-colonial scholars, the founders of the communist movement, and later opponents of the Republic of Vietnam, which kept the prisons in use after 1954 and ran them with American support. The stone compounds, the forced labour in the quarries and coral pits, and the open-topped cells known as the tiger cages, exposed to the public in 1970, made the name notorious. Thousands died and were buried at Hàng Dương.

The last prisoners were freed at the very end of the war in 1975. The prison buildings, the cemetery and the French administrative quarter were preserved as a national monument, and from 1984 the forest and the surrounding sea were given protected status as a national park. Tourism arrived slowly, held back by the difficulty of getting there, and grew after the airport was upgraded and fast ferries began running. In the 2025 administrative reform the district, formerly part of Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu province, became Ho Chi Minh City's only special zone.

Côn Đảo is unusual among Vietnamese destinations in being a place of pilgrimage before it is a place of holidays. A large share of its visitors are Vietnamese who come to burn incense at the prison sites and at Hàng Dương cemetery, and above all at the grave of Võ Thị Sáu, a teenage fighter executed on the island in 1952 and widely regarded as a protective spirit. Offerings of flowers, mirrors, combs and fruit are left at her grave, and the cemetery is busiest around midnight, when families queue to pray.

Temples on the island reflect the same mixture of memorial and folk religion. The hillside pagoda above the town and the shrine at Hàng Keo draw offerings from islanders and visitors alike, and the sea itself is honoured in the whale worship common along the southern Vietnamese coast, where a stranded whale is buried with ceremony.

The resident community is small and much of it has arrived within living memory, from the mainland, to work in the park, in the district administration or in tourism. Life is correspondingly informal: people know one another, doors are left open, and the pace is slow. Islanders are protective of the national park's rules and of the dignity of the prison sites, and the standard courtesies of Vietnam apply — modest dress at temples and graves, shoes removed indoors, and two hands used when giving or receiving something.

About 5,000 people live on Côn Sơn, almost all of them in and around the one town; the other fifteen islands are uninhabited apart from park rangers and lighthouse keepers. The population rises and falls with the flights and ferries, and schools, the hospital and the administration are all sized for a small district rather than a resort.

Work comes from three sources: the national park and the historic sites, tourism and its hotels, restaurants and boats, and fishing. Almost everything else is imported by sea, which keeps prices high, and electricity and fresh water have long been constraints on how much the island can grow. Building has accelerated in the last decade, and how many rooms the island can absorb without damaging the reefs and the quiet is the subject of continuous local argument.

The day starts early, with the market busy before seven and fishing boats coming in to the pier. The middle of the day is hot and empty; the seafront fills again in the late afternoon as families swim, children play football on the sand, and restaurants set out tables. Evenings are quiet, and much of the town's late activity is at the cemetery rather than in bars.

The islands eat what the boats bring in. Grilled fish, squid, prawns and crab are the staples of the seafront restaurants, usually cooked simply with salt, chilli and lime, and served with rice and herbs in the southern manner. The speciality most associated with Côn Đảo is ốc vú nàng, a conical limpet prised off the rocks and grilled or dressed as a salad with herbs and roasted peanuts; mắm nhum, a paste made from sea urchin, is another island product, made in small quantities.

Ordinary Vietnamese food is easy to find in town: bún, phở and bánh mì in the mornings, cơm tấm and rice-and-dish plates at lunchtime, and hotpots in the evening. Vegetables and most fruit arrive from the mainland, so menus are shorter and a little dearer than in the delta, and seafood is the sensible thing to order.

The island's own snack is hạt bàng, the seed of the sea almond trees planted along the streets by the French. The fruit is gathered, dried, cracked by hand and the kernels roasted with salt or sugar; bags of them are sold in the market and at the airport and are the usual present to bring back. Rượu, rice spirit, is drunk with dinner, and coffee is taken the southern way, strong and iced with condensed milk.