Last Christmas, I traveled the tiny island of Con Dao off Vietnam’s southern coast, where I somehow managed to unwittingly fly straight into a typhoon. After the storm passed, I explored the island’s notorious network of prisons. From 1862–1975, Con Dao was France’s, and then Vietnam’s penal colony in the South China Sea, and today, the ruins coexist peacefully alongside markets and homes and schools. Here’s an entry on off-hand discoveries, official histories, and the infamous tiger cages of Con Dao.
