Qualla: Côn Đảo Special Zone https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Côn Đảo Special Zone https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region Côn Đảo Special Zone: Introduction https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ Ho Chi Minh City has a district you cannot drive to. On 16 June 2025, Vietnam's National Assembly Standing Committee redrew the country's administrative map, and when it was done, sixteen islands lying roughly 180 kilometres out in the South China Sea had become a special zone — a đặc khu — of a metropolis whose nearest street is a night's sailing away. Côn Đảo has spent its entire recorded history being governed from somewhere else: by Nguyễn lords on the mainland, by an English trading company, by French colonial administrators in Saigon, by the Republic of Vietnam, and most recently by the provincial government of Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu. Being folded into a city was merely the newest arrangement in a very old pattern.

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Côn Đảo Special Zone: A District You Cannot Drive To https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ The numbers are modest and the geography is not. The archipelago totals 75.79 square kilometres of land spread across sixteen mountainous islands and islets, and at the end of 2023 it held 13,112 people — a population that would barely fill a single block of the city it now belon...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-a-district-you-cannot-drive-to.mp3 0:06 2 full Côn Đảo Special Zone: Wax Gourd Island https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ The name that stuck to these islands on European charts for three centuries came from Malay sailors, who called the place Pulau Kundur — wax gourd island. The French rendered it Poulo-Condore and made it official. Underneath the names is some genuinely interesting rock. Hòn Bảy C...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-wax-gourd-island.mp3 0:06 3 full Côn Đảo Special Zone: The Concubine Who May Never Have Existed https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ For generations the islanders have kept a festival for a woman known as Bà Phi Yến. In the telling, she was a consort of the Nguyễn lord Nguyễn Phúc Ánh during his exile in the 1780s, and she urged him not to buy foreign military help, warning that a victory bought that way would...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-the-concubine-who-may-never-have-existed.mp3 0:06 4 full Côn Đảo Special Zone: A Festival Loses Its Title https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ In early 2022 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism entered the festival on the national list of intangible cultural heritage — the first such listing anywhere in Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu. Descendants of the Nguyễn Phúc line petitioned that April to have it struck off, arguing that ...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-a-festival-loses-its-title.mp3 0:06 5 full Côn Đảo Special Zone: Sacred, Crowded, Contested https://qualla.com/con-ao-special-administrative-region/ Since a fast ferry opened from Sóc Trăng in 2016, the archipelago has absorbed a wave of domestic visitors who come because Côn Đảo is regarded as sacred — a place where tens of thousands died in the prison camps. Thirteen thousand residents now host a great many more than that e...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/e/c/con-ao-special-administrative-region-wp/w3ec-c-n-o-special-zone-sacred-crowded-contested.mp3 0:06 6 full