This is going to be a sad post.
If you want a happy and cheerful one, you will not find it here.
If you want to learn more about the brutal and inhumane past of Con Dao, keep on reading,
During 113 years (1862-1975) Con Dao became the biggest and most brutal prison with the longest time of existence in Indochina. The most barbaric torture and custody took place here, especially in the so called “Tiger Cages”. Many kinds of savage torture and punishment were used, comparable to what happened in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Thousands of Vietnamese died here.
A visit to the Tiger Cages (there are French and American ones) is a spine chilling experience. Even more so when you are the only tourist in the entire complex. Dark prison cells, cages bars instead of ceilings, lifelike models that show how inhumanely prisoners were treated, eerie silence around you except for creaky metallic doors.
The new Con Dao museum, just before the French Tiger Cages, is a must visit for those who want to learn more about the island’s past (not much is recorded on the usual travel guidebooks, and online information is quite fragmented). Well arranged displays and detailed descriptions in English cover the history of Con Dao from its first discovery to the liberation in 1975, and now, with a main focus on the brutality of what happened in prisons and cages.
Remembrance is quite strong and you will always find Vietnamese people paying tribute to those who died in Con Dao. The revolutionary heroine Vu Thi Sau is still celebrated every night at the local cemetery.
As a note at the museum states: “This is the place for generations of
Vietnamese to follow, to learn, to imitate, to care and to preserve” [sic].
So if you visit Con Dao, don’t forget to look beyond the natural beauty of this island and learn about its past!
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