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The Con Dau islands consist of 16 islands off the south coast of Vietnam. We are staying on the largest, Con Son, which feels like a village even though the streets are laid out in neat blocks. It was colonised by the French in the 1800s and has wide tree lined boulevards and old colonial houses, and feels like a tropical paradise with its turquoise tea, tropical forest covered hills and utterly deserted white sands.
We had no idea of it's gruesome past, until stopping to admire a rustic old French cowshed. The plaque outside described how political prisoners were held here and amongst other things forced to eat from troughs like animals. Later we saw a memorial stone describing how escapee prisoners were 'mopped up' on the island, forced to build a mass grave in the sand dunes and then buried alive. After the indescribable horror we'd heard of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, I thought I was becoming numb to learning about war atrocities - but this barbaric cruelty made me feel claustrophobic and panicky. It felt wrong not to visit the local museum and see what are dubbed the 'tiger cages': row upon row of cells topped with bars with an overhead walkway from which guards would sprinkle lime upon the prisoners, burning them, or use long sticks to hit them. I nearly jumped out of my skin looking into the first cell because it appeared to be full of emaciated men - lifelike plaster models shackled by their ankles - shockingly powerful. Many of the prisoners were renowned political prisoners, against colonisation, with prisoners of the Vietnamese War held in later years. I had previously spotted a beautiful coastal woodland from the bus and clocked it as a potentially perfect wild camping spot - it was a mass grave holding 10,000 bodies. Twenty thousand were killed here.
On a chirpier note, the Pie and I hired bikes (granny bikes with no gears and shopping baskets) and followed the beautiful coastal road to the South of the island where it passes a busy fishing port, continues for another five minutes and then abruptly stops at the sea! The locals sailing past on their mopeds laughed at us struggling up the hills.
And finally, although there is not much traffic here at all, we've seen some hilarious sights - my favourites being a moped carrying huge blocks of dripping ice, and another moped carrying two huge fish, their tails sticking out and taking up half the width of the road!
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