Con Dao Island

Dec. 30^th,2024-Jan. 3^rd, 2025 

It was a short flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Con Dao.  Dao means “island” in Vietnamese so my title for this entry is a bit wrong “Con Island Island”, but unless you know Vietnamese, you wouldn’t notice my mistake and it’s easier to remember what this entry is about.

 

The approach to the airport was cool as we came in low over a beach with some tourists in their swimming gear looking up at us.  The airport was tiny, and our plane was the only one there, and I don’t just mean the only active plane, it was “the only plane”.  The turbo-prop plane parked approximately 70 meters from the terminal, yet all the passengers had to load into a bus to be driven for about 30 seconds to the building.  The bus driver must have one of the lamest driving jobs…

Landing at the Con Dao airport.

Our plane was the only plane there...

I had decided to go fancy and booked a room for 3 nights at the Orson Hotel & Resort.  I figured it would during New Year’s Eve, so why not treat myself.  As I exited the tiny terminal, there was a man holding an Orson sign with my name and a few other guests on it, as the room included a free shuttle to the resort, which was on the other side of the island, about 20 kilometres away.  As we drove, I couldn’t help but admire the lushness of the foliage, the beautiful colour of the ocean and some nearby, picturesque islands.  It was a gorgeous spot and much nicer looking than Phu Quoc, the biggest island of Vietnam that Naomi and I had visited a few weeks prior.

After checking in, I headed up to my room and it was fancy, but it had a bit of a strange smell to it.  Thankfully I didn’t notice it after five minutes, but every time I entered the room, I could smell it.  I had read a review on Booking.com that came to mind, and it mentioned: “The resort is nice, but it seems like it needed some more upkeep and renovations”.  I started to see this over the next few days.  Things like my door didn’t close easily, a drawer at writing table would just slide open on its own (the whole thing was at a slant) and around the resort, some of the marble on the steps were chipped or cracked or paint was peeling off of walls on the outside.  Perhaps my time with Naomi in Vietnam has jaded me as she always liked to stay in elegant accommodations.

I sure couldn’t complain about the view out of my room though.  And the infinity pool was quite nice, although it did need a thorough cleaning as there was some algae on the tiling on the sides of the pool. 

 

The view from my room of the pool.

Gorgeous!

It was a nice infinity pool, although it needed a bit of cleaning.

And this was weird.  This is the men's shower room/toilet.  Kinda weird to have the toilet in the corner like that...tough to call this a 4 star hotel.

The oceanfront.  It was only swimmable when the tide was out.  I never bothered trying.

My room is the second from the left on the top floor of the lower level (make sense?!?).

There were some nice sunsets while I was there.

The following day I rented a scooter from the resort to tour around the island.  I headed north along the coast, stopping here and there for photos.  The beaches were all rocky and not very inviting, but still lovely to look at.

There were some beautiful mountains on the island.  This is just looking back from the resort.

The water was nice and clear.

It was a great road to ride on, especially with next to no traffic.

Live to ride...ride to live.

I walked down to this beach on the north shore...but it was quite rocky.

I heard some rustling in the dried leaves by the trunk of a tree...here was the culprit.

The north shore was picturesque, but not conducive to beach goers.

Me ruining the previous pic's beauty.

Mid way along the north coast, the road turned south, bisecting the island and it led me to the town.  From there I headed along the coastal road on the east side of the island towards the airport.  From our landing approach yesterday, I thought it would be cool to be on the beach and see a plane arrive nice and low.  I had checked the schedule, and a few planes were coming in around 1-1:30 pm.  I watched the first one en route thanks to FlightRadar24, one of my favourite apps.  Unfortunately, I  noticed that it was approaching from the south and not the north since there was a north wind.  Damn.  At this point my phone battery died too.  I normally carry a battery pack and a cord in my backpack but couldn’t find it (I would that evening…in the backpack, just in an outside pocket where I don’t normally put it).  I decided that I’d rent the bike again tomorrow and try my luck again, especially since I could no longer take any photos on my journey back to the resort.

A women's memorial in town.

The coastline was lovely.

Heading towards the airport.  The waves were pretty big here (I know, the photo doesn't show that...).

This is the beach on the north side of the airport.  You can see the embankment on the right side of the picture where the runway starts.  It would have been awesome to see a plane coming in low to land here.

Another beautiful sunset at the resort.

This is in the lounge at the resort...and I didn't get this.  The far table is a regular pool table but if you look closely, the closer one doesn't have any pockets.  This is known as carom billiards, where there are three balls one the table and you score points by making your ball hit both of the other ones.  Umm, okay, I think regular pool sounds more interesting, but as I believe: "Don't knock it until you try it."

Early the next morning, I hopped on the scooter to try and see a few planes between 9-10 am.  The weather wasn’t as nice, and it was threatening to rain.  Of course, I forgot my raingear at the resort, but I bought a thin plastic poncho in town when I passed through to get some gas for the bike.

Well wouldn’t you know it, the wind was the wrong direction again…  I didn’t even go onto the beach and instead backtracked south to see if I could get a good vantage point of the planes arriving from that side of the airport.  There was a sign by the road with a basic map to a beach which was down a bumpy, rocky road.  Arriving at the beach, I was welcomed by an ugly site of plastic garbage.

How sad.  What a filthy mess.  Little did I know, the oil on the beach was one of the worst aspects of the pollution.  It's easy to pick up plastic objects, not so easy to remove the thousands of oil globules.

I stood there for a bit and then saw the first plane come in, low but about a kilometre down the beach.  I contemplated about walking over to catch the next plane, due in 20 minutes or so, but there was a small stream of water I would have to cross.  I removed my flip flops, crossed the water and walked about 20 meters, through some rubbish scattered on the ground.  What I hadn’t looked at closely, was that there were thousands of oil globules on the sand and my bare feet were walking on them.  I checked the soles of my feet, and they were mostly black…shit.

It looked harmless here, but did I ever get my feet dirty.

In and amongst the trash, I found a hard plastic spoon and scraped off what I could from my feet and then started wiping them with tissues.  Thankfully I always carry a bunch of Kleenex with me thanks to my allergies.  Twenty minutes later, my feet were as clean as they were going to get without some soap and water.  Whoops.  All that to try and see a plane landing…

Heading back to town.

This construction worker was happy I stopped to take a photo of the view he was enjoying on his break.  Note the wet cement by the barriers that I came close to stepping in.

Gorgeous, but fairly inaccessible coastline.

My next stop was Con Dao Prison, which was built by the French back in 1861 to house convicts guilty of heinous crimes, and at the turn of the century it was primarily for political prisoners.  During the Vietnam war, both political prisoners and prisoners of war were incarcerated there.  From what I gather, it was mainly run by the South Vietnamese as a couple of US Congressional representatives visited there in 1970 and were shocked at the conditions that they found there.  Some pictures and a brief article ended up in Life magazine, much to the dismay of many Americans. 

 

The entrance to Con Dao's main prison.

It would have been hard to break out of here.

The first two cells have a roof, but the ones after were open...no protection from the sun.

The prison was hard core.  One of the main buildings was two-storeys, with prison cells only on the bottom floor.  These were called “Tiger Cages”.  From the second floor, a guard could poke inmates with sticks or pour lime on them which would irritate their eyes and skin.

On the left, this was cell block where the guards could hassle you from above, on the right were the ones with no roofs.

The second floor of the prison block, that belonged to the captors.

Poor bastards...with their ankles in irons.

Looks like he's practicing his spear fishing, but no, just being a bastard to prisoners.

You can't see in this picture, but the uniform on the guard mannequin has a "US Army" badge on the sleeve.  A sign nearby mentioned something about the "puppet regime that the US had installed".

Ankle shackles used on the prisoners.

Then there were cells that had no rooves, so the prisoner would get fried in the sun.  My white English skin wouldn’t have last for long there!

This is the inside of a cell with no roof, so the prisoner would be exposed to the scorching sun.

It would not be fun at all to be incarcerated here...

Sadly most prisoners would have been ill.  TB, open sores, eye infections, malnutrition...

This was known as the "Cow Shed".  It would be like an oven on a hot sunny day with the doors closed.

A prison guard at the entrance to a cell watching over the beatings going on.  

He had a tear gas gun in his hands.

It was hard to believe that this place was in operation during the time I was born.  You would think that humanity would have progressed further by this time.

One of the inner courtyards.  You can see the cow shed.

Outside the prison, on the street.

And after staying in the prison...why wouldn't you "Love Con Dao"?!?  This sign was about 400 meters away from the prison.

One of the main streets of the town.

They certainly liked their flags...

I was only able to spend half an hour at the prison as it was closing for lunch, but that was enough time as there wasn’t much else to see.  I had hoped to go up to a viewpoint but when I found the access road, there was a sign stating that it was a military area.  After a quick search online, I found that the viewpoint was indeed closed thanks to the army…bummer.  So I just returned to the resort for the remainder of the day.

Looking back towards the town, which would be on the left side, in the centre of the bay's shoreline.

Well hello Miss Macaque.

A mom and her young one.

It's grooming time...

Rounding the headland towards my resort.

The Orson Hotel & Resort 

Yet another beautiful sunset.

The next day I checked out of the resort even though I still had one more night on the island.  I had an early morning flight so I decided to relocate to a hotel in the town so my drive wouldn’t be as long the next day.  I found a good restaurant for dinner on the beach…sadly with better food than the supposed four-star resort I had been staying at.

The beach by the restaurant in town.

You can't really see it unless you zoom in, but sadly there was some garbage washed up, but worse were the little globules of oil. 

My last night on Con Dao.

Con Dao is a beautiful island, but I felt I had done everything there was to be done…it was now time to head to a new country:  The Kingdom of Cambodia!

 

Happy New Year Everyone!