Con Dao

The French opened a prison here in 1862 and it was still holding prisoners when Saigon fell in 1975; an American congressional delegation photographed the cages in 1970 and the pictures ended the argument about what the place was. Sixteen islands lie two hundred and thirty kilometres offshore under national park protection, and the cemetery at Hàng Dương, where Võ Thị Sáu is buried, draws Vietnamese visitors through the night.