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 touches down at Con Dao Airport around 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 wait with hand-written name cards.
Stay at Poulo Condor Boutique Resort (VND 1,200,000/night, ~$48) and a driver collects you. The ride takes eight minutes, because Con Son town — the only settlement on Con Dao — is small enough to walk across in twenty.
The first thing you notice is the quiet. Shockingly quiet for Vietnam. No honking motorbikes, no construction noise, no karaoke. Just the ocean and the occasional rooster.
Drop your bags and rent a motorbike from the hotel (VND 150,000/day, ~$6). Ride straight to Dam Trau Beach to shift your brain from city to island mode. Expect it nearly empty — maybe two Vietnamese couples and a man asleep under a tree. Swim for an hour. The water sits at 28°C and runs clear enough to see your feet from the surface.
Day 2 — The Prison Complex
Give the morning to 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 affecting: barred cells open to the sky, where prisoners were shackled to the floor. The displays are graphic, and the weight of the place is real. Plan for around three hours here, then walk to Hang Duong Cemetery — 20,000+ graves, most without names. The grave of Vo Thi Sau, the teenage martyr, stays covered in fresh flowers and burning incense, often with someone kneeling beside it in prayer.
Refuel with 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
Book with Con Dao Dive Center. The two-dive morning package runs VND 2,000,000 (~$80), all equipment included.
First dive: Hon Tai — a rocky islet with coral-covered walls. Visibility around 18 meters. The highlights stack up fast: a resident Napoleon wrasse, schools of batfish, a sleeping whitetip reef shark on a ledge at 15 meters, and genuinely healthy hard coral coverage. Stack it against Koh Tao or Nusa Penida and the coral here holds its own — noticeably better.
Second dive: a sandy slope site near Hon Bay Canh. Look for two green sea turtles, a large barracuda, and a blue-spotted stingray tucked under a coral head. Dive masters note that whale sharks occasionally pass through in March–April.
You're back in town by 1 PM. Nap, then ride to Bai Nhat cove for a late afternoon swim — a small beach reached by a steep, unmarked trail off the main road. Most days, you'll have it to yourself.
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 a historic plantation site. It's not well-signposted, so hire a guide through the national park office (VND 300,000, ~$12).
The forest is dense, humid, and loud with bird calls. Expect to spot a black giant squirrel (endemic to Con Dao), several species of hornbill, and WWII-era bomb craters now softened with vegetation. The thread between natural beauty and violent history runs through everything here.
The trail ends at a viewpoint over the archipelago — sixteen islands scattered across blue water. Guides like Huy, an eleven-year ranger, know this ground morning by morning. "Every morning I walk in this forest," he says. "Every morning it's different."
Day 5 — Sea Turtle Nesting at Bay Canh
This is the centerpiece. The ranger-guided turtle nesting tour departs from Bay Canh Island, the main nesting site. Boats leave at 4 PM, VND 600,000 (~$24) per person.
The crossing to Bay Canh takes 30 minutes. From the landing, you hike through the island's forest to the nesting beach and wait. No lights allowed. No talking above a whisper.
Around 9:15 PM, the ranger's red-filtered light finds her — a massive green sea turtle hauling herself up the sand. The nesting takes about 45 minutes: digging the egg chamber, laying roughly 100 eggs, covering the chamber, and returning to the sea. On a good night, two or three more turtles emerge over the following hour, and the rangers carefully mark each nest for monitoring. Con Dao's conservation program has lifted the population dramatically — from under 100 nesting females twenty years ago to over 500 today.
You're back in Con Son by midnight, and the image of a turtle dragging herself up a dark beach by starlight stays with you a long time.
Day 6 — Diving Day 2 and Relaxation
Two more dives in the morning, deeper this time — 22–25 meters at the sites the dive center calls "Cathedral Rock" and "Bamboo Reef." Soft corals everywhere, cleaner wrasse stations buzzing, and at Cathedral Rock a juvenile hawksbill turtle that holds its pose for a GoPro like a professional model.
Spend the afternoon in full reset mode. Hammock at the hotel. Read. Walk to the small local market near the harbor for mangosteens (VND 30,000/kg, ~$1.20) and a fresh coconut (VND 15,000, ~$0.60), and eat both on the beach.
For dinner, head to Bar 200 — grilled fish, squid, and a Saigon beer, VND 250,000 (~$10) for a full seafood spread. The owner, a retired fisherman, grills everything over charcoal on the street outside. The simplicity is the quality.
Day 7 — Final Morning and Departure
Wake at 5:30 AM for a last ride around the island. Dawn light on Con Dao is extraordinary — soft gold on the water, mist in the valleys, and the unmistakable feeling of being somewhere genuinely remote.
Stop at Dam Trau Beach one more time. A lone fisherman pulls in nets near the shore, his boat the only thing on the water. Sit on the sand until it's time to go.
The flight back to HCMC leaves at noon. Forty-five minutes later you're in Saigon traffic, and the contrast hits you physically — noise, heat, horns, screens. Con Dao feels immediately like a different country.
Why You'll Want to Come Back
Plan the return for June or July — peak turtle season, with 3–5 nesting turtles per night. Save time for the outer islands too: Hon Cau and Hon Tre Lon are said to have even better diving. And give yourself longer than a week; ten days fits this place better than seven. 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 asks you to hold beauty and gravity in the same hand. But that exact combination — nature and memory, empty beaches and a history worth honoring — makes it unlike anywhere else in Vietnam. The turtles alone are worth the trip. Everything else is a bonus that happens to include the best diving in the country.
For more island diving in Southeast Asia, Nusa Lembongan off Bali offers mola mola encounters and healthy reefs.
