Qualla: Con Dao

Con Dao: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most passengers on the morning flight from Ho Chi Minh City are not carrying snorkels. Some are dressed as if for a funeral, and in a sense they are. Côn Đảo has water clear enough to pick out coral from a moving boat and beaches you can have entirely to yourself — sixteen islands scattered across the South China Sea, forest running all the way down to the sand — and yet the great majority of people who cross to it come for a graveyard. For Vietnamese visitors this is sacred ground first and a holiday second. Everything else the archipelago offers, including some of the best diving in the country, arrives as a kind of afterthought.

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Con Dao: Two Kinds of Visitor

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Foreign arrivals talk about the diving, the motorbikes and the emptiness. Vietnamese arrivals talk about Hàng Dương, the cemetery on the northern edge of town, where the queue for one particular grave forms after dark. The two crowds share an airport and almost nothing else. Nobo...

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Con Dao: The Ruins Are on the Way to the Beach

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Côn Sơn town occupies a crescent-shaped valley between green hills and a long grey-blue bay, and it is small enough to cross on foot before the sun gets serious. You do not so much visit the prison here as fail to avoid it. The complex reached its greatest extent in 1973 with sev...

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Con Dao: One Petrol Station, Limited Hours

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Remoteness here is not a marketing adjective. The island has a single filling station, and it opens from 07:00 to 10:30 and again from 14:00 to 16:00, which is the kind of detail that reorganises a day. Rent a bike with a full tank. Helmets are legally required and practically es...

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Con Dao: Eighty Percent Wild

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Roughly four-fifths of the archipelago's land is national park, and it shows the moment you leave the tarmac. The short stone path down to Ông Đụng beach passes through genuine forest, and the macaques that live along it belong to a subspecies found only on these islands. The Côn...

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Con Dao: Paradise on the Clock

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DC112, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fewer than fourteen thousand people live here, and the arithmetic of a tourism boom on a small island rarely favours them. Much of the visitor money concentrates in the larger hotels; the market, the local kitchens and the independent bike hires are where it reaches households. T...

Read more: Con Dao on Qualla

Image: DC112 | CC BY-SA 3.0