CON DAO

Vietnam has been my home for a little more than a year now.

During this time, I have travelled through quite a few parts of the country, from the cities to the coast and the mountains.

But this story is about Côn Đảo.

An island sitting away from the mainland, surrounded by the sea and separated from the usual rhythm of Vietnamese city life.

I had heard enough about it to know that it was different.

Less crowded.

Quieter.

Slower.

And perhaps most importantly, still relatively untouched.

The problem was not getting there.

The problem was convincing my fiancé to come with me.

For months, whenever I mentioned Côn Đảo, she would look at me with the same expression.

Not excitement.

Not curiosity.

More like Why would I go there?

“Côn Đảo? What will we even do there?”

I tried explaining that sometimes the best places are precisely the ones where there isn’t much to do.

That didn’t help.

To her, a holiday meant places to see, things to explore and enough activity to keep the day moving.

Côn Đảo sounded suspiciously like the opposite.

Still, I kept trying.

I suggested it again.

And again.

And probably one more time than I should have.

Eventually, after more than a year of persuasion, she finally agreed.

I had won.

Or at least, I thought I had.

On 4 August 2026, we boarded our flight from Ho Chi Minh City.

It was a short flight, roughly forty minutes, but psychologically it felt like we were travelling much farther.

As the aircraft moved away from the city, the buildings gradually disappeared beneath us.

And then there was mostly blue.

Blue sky.

Blue sea.

And an island waiting somewhere ahead.

Côn Đảo.

For the first time, she was going to see the place I had been talking about for so long.

I was curious to see her reaction.

The short flight from Ho Chi Minh City made the journey remarkably easy.

And once we landed, something immediately felt different.

There was no overwhelming rush.

No constant noise.

No traffic trying to occupy every possible inch of road.

The island seemed to operate at its own speed.

And that was exactly what I had hoped for.

We rented a bike and decided that this would be our primary mode of transportation.

It turned out to be the perfect choice.

Côn Đảo is small enough to explore without constantly checking maps or worrying about traffic. You can simply get on the bike and ride.

And that is perhaps one of the nicest things about being there.

You don’t always need a destination.

Sometimes you can just follow the road.

So that’s what we did.

We rode around.

The roads were relatively quiet, the air felt different from Ho Chi Minh City, and there was a strange pleasure in not having to hurry anywhere.

After spending so much time in cities where every minute seems to have somewhere to go, Côn Đảo made doing nothing feel like a perfectly reasonable plan.

Our first stop was An Ơi Café & Restaurant.

It was a small café, but exactly the kind of place we needed after the flight.

The menu had a nice mix of local choices along with European and American breakfast options, so there was something for both of us.

We ordered breakfast and coffee and simply sat there for a while.

Nothing dramatic happened.

And that was the beauty of it.

We had arrived.

We had nowhere urgent to be.

The island wasn’t going anywhere.

For once, neither were we.

From the café, we headed towards our hotel — Secret Côn Đảo.

And this was probably the moment when I realised that the trip was going to be better than I had imagined.

The hotel had a beautiful location, close to the sea and within easy reach of the museum and the waterfront road.

The swimming pool was one of the highlights.

After the heat and the ride around the island, getting into the pool felt like exactly the right decision.

The staff were courteous, the hotel was comfortable, and the location made it easy to step outside and start exploring again whenever we wanted.

But honestly, we didn’t do much that afternoon.

And I don’t think we needed to.

We spent some time around the hotel, rested, and eventually went out again as the afternoon began to disappear.

One of the things I love about travelling is watching a place change as the day moves along.

Côn Đảo is particularly beautiful during those quieter hours.

The sunlight begins to soften.

The wind becomes cooler.

The sea starts reflecting different shades of blue.

And then, slowly, the sun begins its journey towards the horizon.

We found ourselves sitting near the sea, watching the light change.

The horizon went from bright to golden, then orange, then darker shades as the evening slowly took over.

Nothing spectacular was happening.

There were no fireworks.

No loud music.

No crowds gathering around us.

Just the sea, the wind and the changing sky.

And somehow, that was enough.

By around 7 PM, we were hungry.

So we got back on the bike and went looking for dinner.

We ended up at Riso Amaro — Rooftop Italian Restaurant & Cocktail Bar.

After spending most of the day eating local and keeping things simple, pizza sounded like a surprisingly good idea.

And it turned out to be one of the nicest meals of the trip.

The pizza was excellent.

But what made the evening memorable wasn’t just the food.

The staff were genuinely warm, and the owner was incredibly kind and welcoming.

We sat on the rooftop, had our food, ordered a couple of beers and simply enjoyed the evening.

There was something almost strange about how peaceful everything felt.

In Ho Chi Minh City, 7 PM can mean traffic, horns, people rushing home, restaurants filling up and the city preparing for another busy night.

Here, it felt completely different.

The night was quiet.

The wind moved gently around us.

The island seemed to have no interest in rushing towards tomorrow.

And neither did we.

It was one of those evenings where you look at the person sitting across the table, take another sip of your drink and think:

This is a pretty good place to be.

The next morning, we left Secret Côn Đảo and moved towards Orson Resort.

If Secret Côn Đảo gave us the comfort of being close to the town and the waterfront, Orson felt like another world altogether.

It was calmer.

Much calmer.

And this time, we decided not to fill the day with plans.

We stayed.

We walked around.

We sat.

We looked at the sea.

We talked.

And occasionally, we simply did nothing.

That sounds incredibly boring when you write it down.

But there are places where doing nothing feels like wasting time.

Côn Đảo isn’t one of them.

Here, doing nothing feels like part of the experience.

Perhaps that’s why the island had slowly started changing her opinion.

The person who had originally asked me,

“What will we even do there?”

was now perfectly comfortable spending hours doing almost nothing.

I didn’t point it out.

There are some victories better left unmentioned.

We spent the entire day and night at Orson, enjoying the surroundings and the quietness of the resort.

If you want to know more about the stay itself, I have written a separate review of Orson Resort.

[Read the Review of Orson Resort Con Dao].

The next morning, it was time to leave.

We packed our things, got back on the bike for the last time and headed towards the airport.

There was no dramatic ending.

No grand final attraction.

No last-minute adventure.

Just a short ride, a small airport and a flight waiting to take us back to Ho Chi Minh City.

And perhaps that was perfectly appropriate.

Because Côn Đảo had never been about doing everything.

It was about slowing down.

About waking up without a long list of things to accomplish.

About riding a bike without worrying about traffic.

About sitting beside the sea and watching the light disappear.

About having a coffee without checking the time.

About eating good food, having a beer, listening to the wind and allowing a day to simply pass.

When we landed back in Ho Chi Minh City, the noise returned almost immediately.

Traffic.

People.

Cars.

Motorbikes.

Phones.

Messages.

Work.

The usual rhythm of life.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about that little island we had just left behind.

No.

Thankfully, she was completely wrong.

Côn Đảo wasn’t boring.

It was simply different.

It isn’t the destination I would recommend to someone looking for nightlife, parties, shopping malls or a packed itinerary.

You won’t come here to tick twenty attractions off a list.

You come here when you want the opposite.

When you want the world to become a little quieter.

When you want fewer people around you.

When you want to ride without knowing exactly where the road is going.

When you want to sit beside the sea and realise that you have been staring at the horizon for twenty minutes without saying a word.

Côn Đảo is not loud.

It doesn’t demand your attention.

It doesn’t constantly try to entertain you.

It simply exists — surrounded by the sea, moving at its own pace.

And perhaps that is exactly why I liked it so much.

After living in Vietnam for more than a year, I have travelled through many beautiful places.

Some impressed me with their landscapes.

Some with their food.

Some with their history.

Some with their energy.

But Côn Đảo gave me something different.

Peace.

Not the kind of peace you have to search for.

The kind that appears naturally when there is nothing around you demanding your attention.

And maybe that’s what I had been trying to explain to her all those months.

You don’t always travel somewhere to do something.

Sometimes you travel somewhere simply to feel something.

Côn Đảo is one of those places.

And eventually, even she understood why I had wanted to bring her here.

Perhaps some destinations don’t need to be explained.

You just have to land there.