Paradise & Isolation in the East Sea - Con Dao 2014
Set off the southeast coast of Vietnam, the island of Côn Đảo is small outpost of green mountains in the vast blue-green sea. We journeyed here in the spring of 2014 with our friend Emily Ohman, a fellow USA-born expat living in Da Nang. Kelsey and I had recently traveled to Phu Quoc, the other notable tourist island in Vietnam, for the new year and we were eager to visit Con Dao as well. It turned out to be a great vacation and everyone had a really good time. The island is small and quite rugged, with very little flat ground to be found amongst the forest-clad mountains. The people, while not unfriendly, are very withdrawn and laid back, and just don't need to be overly joyous like many people do on the mainland. They are friendly enough once engaged, and are willing to help if you ask. Life is very laid back in general, with dogs laying in the middle of the streets and "rush hour" consisting of 3 or 4 bikes in 10 minutes time. In short, the lifestyle here, in addition to the island being 150 km offshore, means it is a great place to sneak away for a few days to "get away from it all".
Flying into Con Dao is a thrilling and fun time. The airport sits on the northern part of the island, and the runway is literally as long as the island is wide. So as you descend towards the island from Ho Chi Minh, you get to watch the ocean get closer, and closer....and closer, until finally when it feels like you are not headed for something good, the island appears suddenly, and you have a brief glimpse of a beautiful beach before you suddenly touch down on the runway. It's probably better if you can't see out the window but if you can it's quite exciting.
We had four nights on the island, and we ended up staying at a nice place called "Con Dao Camping". This was right on the beach, a rarity for Con Dao, as most of the hotels are inland a block or two. It was a simple A frame and while on the basic side, worked well for us. We arrived in the afternoon on the first day, and proceeded to hang out the rest of the day, relaxing in the sun and enjoying the laid back island vibe. One thing we noticed the first night was just how amazingly dark it was here. We had just arrived from Ho Chi Minh, which hardly understands the idea of "dark". But on Con Dao, there is very little light, and many things simply get switched off after about 7 pm anyway, so it gets dark. I mean, like, hard to see five feet in front of you dark. At one restaurant the power went off unexpectedly (although the locals say its quite common) and I was amazed by how pitch black it was. Definitely a change from our home in Da Nang.
The next day we made a goal of finding a pristine beach to go relax on and be away from anyone. On our way in I had spied what looked like a nice, empty beach not far from a road and an established beach. The tourist beach and the empty beach were separated by a small chunk of rock that jutted out into the sea between the two of them. I knew how to get to the beach and wondered if we could just hike over the rocks to the other beach. When we pulled up to the main beach, we were greeted with the sounds of about twenty heavily drunk Vietnamese men drinking and singing along to the horribly loud and horribly terrible karaoke music. However, we kept walking, hopped over the rocks with no issue, and then found ourselves on a beautiful, quiet, and- more importantly- deserted, beach. Immediately the clothes came off and we all skinny dipped for the next two hours, enjoying the cool water on our bits and pieces.
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After that it was back to the hotel to sleep away the afternoon. We dined at "Infiniti" Restaurant that night- a bit expensive but tasted ok. The next day we spent doing absolutely nothing, just laying at the beach and being bums. It was quite nice to literally accomplish nothing over the course of the entire day. We went to the five-star Six Senses for an afternoon drink and enjoyed pretending like we were somebodies, that place is something else. A private bay that's a kilometer long, almost zero light pollution, and completely cut off from anyone else by small but steep mountain passes. Needless to say it was an amazing meal, if expensive.
In the evening we went out to the southwest side of the island, where we enjoyed a beautiful sunset overlooking the ocean. Once we got home, I chatted with our neighbor, who happened to be a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City. She was very polite and explained that Con Dao is very popular with people in Ho Chi Minh who have a little bit of disposable income, and that foreigners haven't really become that huge of a slice of the tourist pie, and that local Vietnamese tourism is still the biggest. After thinking about our flight in, I guess she is right- the flight was a whole lot of Vietnamese and not that many Westerners.
In the evening we went out to the southwest side of the island, where we enjoyed a beautiful sunset overlooking the ocean. Once we got home, I chatted with our neighbor, who happened to be a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City. She was very polite and explained that Con Dao is very popular with people in Ho Chi Minh who have a little bit of disposable income, and that foreigners haven't really become that huge of a slice of the tourist pie, and that local Vietnamese tourism is still the biggest. After thinking about our flight in, I guess she is right- the flight was a whole lot of Vietnamese and not that many Westerners.
The next day we went snorkeling and diving. The seas around Con Dao haven't yet been destroyed like so many of the other reefs and undersea environments in Vietnam. As a result, the snorkeling and diving was quite amazing, with plenty of good sized and beautiful fish and other wildlife, but the big highlights were the table corals- massive yet delicate flat topped growths that looked like underwater trees, and were many colors including red, blue, and purple. The sea cucumber population was quite healthy also, with thousands of them hanging out in some areas. Our guide owned a company called Dive! Dive! Dive! in the small town of Con Son and showed us to where the best ones were still around.
Kelsey and Emily did their first dive together, and said it was a lot of fun and quite beautiful. I don't Scuba Dive as I have some ear issues and also some psychological hurdles that prevent from doing it. Still, I do love a good snorkel mission, and I had a great time tooling around while they dove. Our first dive site was in the bay just off the beach where the turtle eggs hatch every year. This is Con Dao's probably single biggest thing that it is "known" for, and a place where they are trying hard to be friendly to the turtles. There is even a center on the bay where scientists (and guests who pay the big bill to do so) stay for a couple weeks and monitor the progress.
Our second dive site was off the coast off one of Con Dao's larger "junior islands"- islands that aren't anywhere near as big as the main one but still sizeable plots of raw jungle. Emily chose to go diving here while Kelsey opted to join me for some snorkeling off the cliffs next to the island. It was enjoyable to sit in the blue green water and enjoy the pleasure of the majesty of the hard mountains on the mainland with my wife, with fish below and seabirds above. A real slice of heaven. Emily said her dive was "amazing", and said it was like "swimming in the Little Mermaid's grotto". She was overflowing and bubbling with excitement after she was done.
That night Kelsey and I went back to Six Senses, this time on a romantic dinner date. It was an amazing time, but we were a bit out of our league. We are quite used to the resort game, and knowing how to walk around as if you are a somebody, which is the quickest way to doing whatever you really want, because of the number of resorts we have frequented in the Da Nang area. However, this place is the tramping ground for people such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, as well as notable government leaders and representatives from other countries. It is marketed as an "escape from it all" for the wealthy, yet one that is still only an hour flight from a major international airport.
This disparity showed up when we sat down for dinner, where the wonderful woman on wait duty asked us if we wanted a bottle of wine to start the meal. We politely declined, stating that we didn't have the money for it. She smiled and told us that we were in luck because this was a fairly reasonable bottle, and only 2.1 million dong. That's about $105 US dollars. We kinda chuckled and said we weren't staying, and then she happily told us we could store it in their cellar until we return again. It was hard not to laugh, but we were polite and turned her away. The food was as amazing as would be expected; everything we ate was beyond delicious. It was an amazing meal and an amazing date, and a fun ride home in the (super) dark with my wife on board.
This disparity showed up when we sat down for dinner, where the wonderful woman on wait duty asked us if we wanted a bottle of wine to start the meal. We politely declined, stating that we didn't have the money for it. She smiled and told us that we were in luck because this was a fairly reasonable bottle, and only 2.1 million dong. That's about $105 US dollars. We kinda chuckled and said we weren't staying, and then she happily told us we could store it in their cellar until we return again. It was hard not to laugh, but we were polite and turned her away. The food was as amazing as would be expected; everything we ate was beyond delicious. It was an amazing meal and an amazing date, and a fun ride home in the (super) dark with my wife on board.
Unfortunately the next morning was our last and we had to head back to civilization. We got the airport on time and did the classic "hurry-up-and-wait" dance that is so common in Vietnamese airports. While sitting there I noticed an interesting thing- everyone comes in on the same plane. Whether you are a Vietnamese tourist from Ho Chi Minh, a tourist from Germany, or a super wealthy businessman from the USA, you all fly in on the same aircraft. And it isn't a big one- they are almost all Fokker ATR-72s. We're talkin' 64 people max. You see everyone on the flight. Plus, when you are on the island, you end up seeing the same people over and over and the same places- museums, restaurants, the markets, the dive boat. Everyone flies in together, separates, comes back together for different activities, splits up, comes back together and flies out together. It's really funny and the plane is quite the equalizer. Kelsey says this whole cycle reminds her of summer camp and that Con Dao is just a giant grown up Vietnamese summer. She may be right, but regardless, it is a damn beautiful place, and worth visiting before the inevitable development ruins it.
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All photos copyright Kit Davidson unless otherwise noted.