A Return to Côn Đảo
The good side of Vietnam tourism
Good afternoon! Welcome to the latest edition of the Vietnam Weekly exclusively for paying subscribers, written by Ho Chi Minh City-based reporter Mike Tatarski. I hope those of you in Vietnam had a great National Day holiday. Don’t forget to share the newsletter with any friends or colleagues interested in becoming a supporter.
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Following the positive reception to the travelogue I wrote following a central Vietnam cycling trip in July, here’s something in a similar vein. I’m enjoying the opportunity to write from beyond the desk in my home office.
People across the country need to keep an eye on Typhoon Yagi - it’s expected to make landfall in northern Vietnam as a very dangerous storm on Friday or Saturday, and HCMC is getting heavy rain thanks to it as I write this.
I hadn’t been to the Côn Đảo Archipelago since 2015 - an eternity for a tourist destination in a rapidly developing country.
After that trip, I wrote a post on my defunct Along the Mekong blog titled ‘Con Dao: Vietnam's Last Paradise?’ It concluded with me lamenting that the place would eventually be “discovered,” but “I sincerely hope that, whenever that happens, it doesn't go the way of Phu Quoc.”
I’ve returned with great news: it has not gone that way!
Despite the long gap between visits, my assumption was that - like Phong Nha - the archipelago had avoided most of the worst excesses of other tourism-centric parts of Vietnam, especially the poster children of Phú Quốc (which was already taking a concerning turn almost a decade ago) and Sa Pa.
That is largely accurate, though mostly thanks to geography, not developers deciding to behave themselves. Côn Sơn, the main island, is served by a tiny airport that can only accommodate twin-prop planes. Even with hourly flights from Ho Chi Minh City, that means only a few dozen people arrive at a time, while ferries from the mainland can add a few hundred more daily.
The Ministry of Transport plans to upgrade the airport to allow larger passenger jets to land, but there’s no timeline for such work at the moment.
Thanks to this limited connectivity, Côn Sơn is mercifully quiet even on a long national holiday weekend. There are no mega-resorts and the rampaging tentacles of Vinpearl/Sun World/FLC Group/etc. are nowhere to be seen.