A Week on Con Dao: Prison History, Empty Beaches, and the Best Diving in Vietnam For caves instead of beaches, Phong Nha in central Vietnam has the world's largest underground passages.
Day 1 — Arrival and First Impressions
The Bamboo Airways flight from Ho Chi Minh City landed at Con Dao Airport at 10:30 AM. The airport is the size of a large house. One luggage belt. One exit. Outside, a handful of taxi drivers and hotel staff holding hand-written name cards.
My hotel, Poulo Condor Boutique Resort (VND 1,200,000/night, ~$48), sent a driver. The ride to the hotel took eight minutes. That's because Con Son town — the only settlement on Con Dao — is small enough to walk across in twenty minutes.
First impression: quiet. Shockingly quiet for Vietnam. No honking motorbikes, no construction noise, no karaoke. Just the sound of the ocean and the occasional rooster.
Dropped bags. Rented a motorbike from the hotel (VND 150,000/day, ~$6). Rode to Dam Trau Beach to recalibrate my brain from city to island mode. The beach was empty except for two Vietnamese couples and a man sleeping under a tree. Swam for an hour. The water was 28°C and clear enough to see my feet from the surface.
Day 2 — The Prison Complex
Spent the morning at Con Dao Prison and Museum. Entry: VND 40,000 (~$1.60). The complex covers multiple buildings from different eras — French colonial cells (1862), the tiger cages (built with American funding in the 1960s), and the "cow cage" punishment cells.
The tiger cages are the most disturbing. Barred cells open to the sky, where prisoners were shackled to the floor in stress positions. Guards would pour lime powder through the bars, burning skin and eyes. The mannequin displays are graphic. A Vietnamese tour group was crying openly.
I spent three hours. It's a lot to process. Afterward, I walked to Hang Duong Cemetery — 20,000+ graves, most without names. The grave of Vo Thi Sau, the teenage martyr, was covered in fresh flowers and burning incense. An elderly Vietnamese woman was kneeling beside it, praying.
Lunch at Infinitea in Con Son town — com tam (broken rice with grilled pork). VND 45,000 (~$1.80). Simple, perfect.
Day 3 — Diving Day 1
Booked with Con Dao Dive Center. Two-dive morning package: VND 2,000,000 (~$80) including all equipment.
First dive: Hon Tai — a rocky islet with coral-covered walls. Visibility: 18 meters. Highlights: a resident Napoleon wrasse, schools of batfish, a sleeping whitetip reef shark on a ledge at 15 meters, and genuinely healthy hard coral coverage. I've dived Koh Tao and Nusa Penida — the coral here was noticeably better.
Second dive: a sandy slope site near Hon Bay Canh. Spotted two green sea turtles, a large barracuda, and a blue-spotted stingray hiding under a coral head. The dive master said whale sharks occasionally pass through in March-April.
Back in town by 1 PM. Napped. Rode to Bai Nhat cove for a late afternoon swim — a small beach reached by a steep, unmarked trail off the main road. Nobody else there.
Day 4 — So Ray Plantation and Forest Hike
The So Ray Plantation trail winds through the national park interior — 10km of ancient hardwood forest, passing through a historic plantation site. It's not well-signposted, so I hired a guide through the national park office (VND 300,000, ~$12).
The forest is dense, humid, and alive with bird calls. We saw a black giant squirrel (endemic to Con Dao), several species of hornbill, and the guide pointed out WWII-era bomb craters now filled with vegetation. The connection between natural beauty and violent history is inescapable here.
The trail ends at a viewpoint overlooking the archipelago — sixteen islands scattered across blue water. My guide, Huy, sat down and lit a cigarette. "Every morning I walk in this forest," he said. "Every morning it's different." He's been a ranger for eleven years.
Day 5 — Sea Turtle Nesting at Bay Canh
This was the trip's centerpiece. The ranger-guided turtle nesting tour runs from Bay Canh Island, the main nesting site. Boat departure at 4 PM, VND 600,000 (~$24) per person.
The boat ride to Bay Canh takes 30 minutes. We hiked through the island's forest to the nesting beach and waited. No lights allowed. No talking above a whisper.
At 9:15 PM, the ranger's red-filtered light found her — a massive green sea turtle hauling herself up the sand. The nesting process took about 45 minutes: digging the egg chamber, laying approximately 100 eggs, covering the chamber, and returning to the sea.
Two more turtles emerged over the next hour. The rangers carefully marked each nest for monitoring. Con Dao's turtle conservation program has increased the population significantly — from under 100 nesting females twenty years ago to over 500 today.
Returned to Con Son at midnight. Didn't sleep for hours. The image of a turtle dragging herself up a dark beach by starlight is not something you shake quickly.
Day 6 — Diving Day 2 and Relaxation
Two more dives in the morning. Deeper sites this time — 22-25 meters at spots the dive center calls "Cathedral Rock" and "Bamboo Reef." Soft corals everywhere, cleaner wrasse stations buzzing with activity, and a juvenile hawksbill turtle at Cathedral Rock that posed for my GoPro like a professional model.
Afternoon: full reset mode. Hammock at the hotel. Read a book. Walked to the small local market near the harbor — bought mangosteens (VND 30,000/kg, ~$1.20) and a fresh coconut (VND 15,000, ~$0.60). Ate both on the beach.
Dinner at Bar 200 — grilled fish, squid, and a Saigon beer. VND 250,000 (~$10) for a full seafood dinner. The owner, a retired fisherman, grills everything over charcoal on the street outside. The simplicity is the quality.
Day 7 — Final Morning and Departure
Woke at 5:30 AM for a last ride around the island. The light at dawn on Con Dao is extraordinary — soft gold on the water, mist in the valleys, and the feeling of being somewhere genuinely remote from the rest of the world.
Stopped at Dam Trau Beach one last time. A fisherman was pulling in nets near the shore. His boat was the only thing on the water. We nodded at each other. I sat on the sand until it was time to go.
Flight back to HCMC at noon. Forty-five minutes and you're in Saigon traffic. The contrast is physical — noise, heat, horns, screens. Con Dao feels immediately like a different country.
Would I Go Back?
I'm already planning the return trip. June or July — peak turtle season, 3-5 nesting turtles per night. I want to do the outer islands too: Hon Cau and Hon Tre Lon reportedly have even better diving. And I want to stay longer — seven days wasn't enough. Ten would be right. The reef health here rivals what you'll find at Nusa Lembongan off Bali.
Con Dao isn't an easy destination. It's remote, the infrastructure is basic, and it confronts you with a history that's hard to reconcile with paradise. But that combination — beauty and gravity, nature and memory — makes it unlike anywhere else I've been. The turtles alone are worth the trip. Everything else is a bonus that happens to include the best diving in Vietnam.
For more island diving in Southeast Asia, Nusa Lembongan off Bali offers mola mola encounters and healthy reefs.
