Con Dao tours 2026: sea, jungle, prison and turtles

Prices current as of August 2026. Rate used: ~26,000 VND = $1.

Four Kinds of Tour and How to Pick One

• Ben Dam Port (Cảng Bến Đầm): Departure point for the far islands — 15-20 minutes to Bay Canh by speedboat
• Hon Bay Canh (Hòn Bảy Cạnh): The target of most sea tours and of every turtle sleepover — 1884 lighthouse, mangroves, two coral fields
• Hon Tai (Hòn Tài): Closest dive site, 5-10 minutes out — Calm water, 5-15 m bottom — the family option
• Hon Cau (Hòn Cau): Far island, 45 minutes out — Visibility to 30 m, soft corals, ruins of a French spring
• Con Dao National Park (Vườn quốc gia Côn Đảo): Tickets and rangers, 29 Võ Thị Sáu — 60,000 VND adult, 20,000 student
• Ong Dung Beach (Bãi Ông Đụng): End of the trail through the So Ray plantation — Pebbles, shore snorkeling, zero facilities
• Dam Tre trailhead (Vịnh Đầm Tre): 5 km one way to the mangrove lagoon — Ranger guide required, 5-6 hours round trip
• Mount Thanh Gia (Núi Thánh Giá): Highest point of Con Son, 577 m — 5 am start, panorama of the whole archipelago
• Con Dao Prison (Nhà tù Côn Đảo): Phu Hai, Phu Tuong, Phu Binh camps — Ticket 40,000 VND, 7:30-11:30 and 13:30-17:00
• Hang Duong Cemetery (Nghĩa trang Hàng Dương): 1,994 graves, including Vo Thi Sau — Open around the clock, free
• Con Dao Museum (Bảo tàng Côn Đảo): 2,000 exhibits, 10 Nguyễn Huệ — Ticket 20,000 VND, an hour to ninety minutes

Con Dao is not a resort island. You can lounge by a pool for two days, and then curiosity starts nagging: what are those boats heading east, what is inside the prison museum, do turtles really haul out onto the sand at night. Tours are the answer to all three, and they end up being most of what you remember from the trip.

Local operators sort everything into four blocks. Each has its own season, price band and audience.

The rule that shapes every itinerary: sea tours and trekking hardly overlap. April and May let you combine them; the rest of the year it is water or jungle, pick one. History runs regardless of weather, which is why it belongs on your arrival or departure day.

Almost nobody books a bicycle here, which is a mistake. Con Dao is one of very few places in Vietnam where you can ride fifty kilometres and meet no traffic at all. Rental rates and the alternatives are in the island transport guide.

Sea Tours: Snorkeling, Diving, Kayaking

These are the best reefs in Vietnam, and it is not close. Coral covers more than 42% of the seabed here, the water holds over 1,380 recorded species, and in season visibility reaches thirty metres against five to ten in Nha Trang or Phu Quoc. Most boats leave from the tourist pier in Côn Sơn town or from Bến Đầm port in the south, then work a loop around four nearby islands.

Snorkeling Hon Bay Canh, the Default Trip

Hòn Bảy Cạnh is where almost every sea tour points. Fifteen to twenty minutes by speedboat from Bến Đầm. It is the second largest island in the archipelago: 683 hectares of tropical forest, mangroves along the west shore, an 1884 French lighthouse on the eastern tip, and the only mass turtle nesting site on Con Dao.

A standard full-day package looks like this:

• 8:00 — pickup at the hotel or the pier
• 8:30-9:00 — speedboat crossing
• 9:00-11:00 — snorkeling over two coral fields, shallow and deep
• 11:00-12:30 — hike to the Bay Canh lighthouse (3 km, 325 m of climb) or a mangrove walk
• 12:30-14:00 — lunch on the island: fish, rice, vegetables
• 14:00-15:30 — second session on the sheltered north beach
• 15:30-16:30 — back to port

2026 price: 900,000-1,200,000 VND (~$35-46) per person in a group of up to twelve. Con Dao Dive Center holds its snorkeling day at a flat 1,000,000 VND; independent boat owners start at 900,000. Included: boat, mask, snorkel and fins, lunch, water, insurance, and a ranger guide who speaks English. Bring your own camera and oxybenzone-free sunscreen.

Water like glass, fish in whole schools. Four turtles, a ray and a cuttlefish in three hours of snorkeling. After Nha Trang this feels like a different countrycomposite of TripAdvisor reviews, 2026

The Other Reefs: Hon Tai, Hon Cau, Hon Tre

Beyond Bay Canh, operators run three more islets:

• Hòn Tài — the closest, 5-10 minutes from Bến Đầm. Highest fish density of the group, calm water, a bottom between five and fifteen metres. The one to pick with kids. Half-day: 700,000-900,000 VND (~$27-35).
• Hòn Cau — the far one, 45 minutes out. Visibility 25-30 metres, soft coral gardens, blue-spotted rays, the occasional bamboo shark. Ruins of a French spring survive on the island, where Phạm Văn Đồng, later prime minister of North Vietnam, lived in exile. Full day: 1,200,000-1,800,000 VND (~$46-69).
• Hòn Tre Lớn — small, and mostly a filler stop on the four-island route alongside Bay Canh.

Best value per day is the four-island tour at 1,200,000-1,800,000 VND with lunch and three snorkeling stops. Nearly every operator sells a version of it.

Diving: Two PADI Centres, No Crowds

Two PADI operations work here: Con Dao Dive Center (running since 2013, PADI Store #S-23508) and Amadive Con Dao. They are the only dive shops in the entire archipelago. Almost no competition, but also no games with pricing — the rate card is published.

Rates for 2026:

• Try Dive — two introductory dives at a 1:2 ratio for complete beginners: 3,600,000 VND (~$138)
• Discover Scuba Diving — the fuller PADI programme with theory and a logged dive: 4,500,000 VND (~$173)
• Fun Dive for certified divers — 3,600,000 VND for two dives with lunch and gear
• PADI Open Water, three to four days — 12,900,000 VND (~$496) with four training dives; PADI sells the eLearning materials separately
• PADI Advanced, two to three days — the same 12,900,000 VND for five adventure dives, deep and navigation mandatory

All of this costs more than Nha Trang or Phu Quoc, and the conditions justify it: twenty-five metres of visibility, two divers per instructor, reefs with no anchor scars. If you are shopping for a place to earn your first card, Con Dao is one of the better options in Southeast Asia. How it compares with the rest of the country is in the Vietnam diving guide.

Kayaks and Canoes

Kayaks are the format nobody books. Rental runs 200,000-400,000 VND an hour (~$7.70-15). The main route goes from Đất Dốc beach to the mouth of the mangrove creek in the northeast: four or five kilometres one way, about an hour at an easy pace. Canoes live at Six Senses for guests, at The Secret Côn Đảo, and at three family rental shacks in Côn Sơn town.

A guided paddle around Côn Sơn bay or into the mangroves costs 800,000-1,500,000 VND (~$31-58) and takes three or four hours. Go before ten in the morning, before the wind picks up.

Jungle Tours: Con Dao National Park

Con Dao National Park is one of roughly seventy protected areas worldwide carrying the IUCN Green List certificate. Its 19,998 hectares split into six thousand marine and fourteen thousand terrestrial, which is half of the entire archipelago. Inside live species found nowhere else: the black giant squirrel of Côn Đảo, long-tailed macaques, Nicobar pigeons and imperial pigeons.

Entry needs a ticket: 60,000 VND adult, 20,000 student, 10,000 schoolchild. Buy it at the park office at 29 Võ Thị Sáu or at ranger posts on the trails. A ranger guide costs 600,000 VND a day in Vietnamese and 700,000 in English, and that is the price for the whole group, not per head. The park also rents mask and snorkel at 70,000 VND, a life jacket at 15,000 and a freshwater beach shower at 30,000. Longer routes are closed to unaccompanied walkers.

Route 1: So Ray to Ong Dung, the Main Trek

This is the park's signature walk. It starts on the western edge of Côn Sơn, climbs through the Sở Rẫy plantation the French laid out in the nineteenth century, then drops through jungle to Ông Đụng beach on the west coast.

• Distance: 1 km to the plantation plus 700 m of descent to the beach
• Time: 1.5-2 hours one way, 3-4 hours as a loop
• Difficulty: moderate, genuinely slippery after rain
• Season: November-April. Closed in summer over wildfire risk
• Cost: 60,000 VND ticket plus 600,000-700,000 VND for a guide for the group

Century-old banyans stand on Sở Rẫy, with lianas as thick as your arm. With luck you will spot the black squirrel: three times the size of the ordinary kind and rarely down from the canopy. Ông Đụng ends the walk with an empty pebble beach and decent snorkeling straight off the shore. Carry mask, snorkel and a thermos — there is nothing there at all. More on the beach itself in the Con Dao beaches guide.

Route 2: Dam Tre, Mangroves and Birds

Đầm Tre bay in the northeast is a quiet lagoon with mangrove thickets and a tern colony. The trail runs five kilometres one way from the road over the hills. Half a day, and rangers do not let anyone in unaccompanied.

• Distance: 5 km one way
• Time: 5-6 hours round trip
• Difficulty: moderate, trekking sandals recommended
• Cost: 800,000-1,200,000 VND (~$31-46) per group with guide and boat drop-off

What it is for: tern nests on the cliffs, a mangrove tunnel, and a lagoon flat enough to snorkel in. On the way back the trail opens onto views of four of the smaller islands.

Route 3: Mount Thanh Gia, the Panorama

Núi Thánh Giá, Mount Holy Cross, is the high point of Con Son at 577 metres. On top sit the remains of a French radio beacon and a view over all sixteen islands. People climb it at dawn, leaving at five to beat the heat.

• Distance: 4 km one way
• Time: 2.5 hours up, 1.5 down
• Difficulty: hard, with steep sections
• Cost: 700,000-1,000,000 VND (~$27-38) with a guide

Do not skip the guide here. The trail fades in places and taking a wrong branch is easy. Carry two litres of water minimum, a torch and closed shoes.

What Lives Out There

Larger animals: long-tailed macaques that come right onto the paths, the black squirrel, two species of wild pig. Birds: the white-headed imperial pigeon, the iridescent Nicobar pigeon, and a handful of endemic small species. Snakes exist but rarely turn up in visitor areas. Closed shoes handle about ninety-five per cent of the concern.

History Tours: the Prison and the Cemetery

Con Dao is not only beaches and reefs. For 113 years the French colonial empire and then the South Vietnamese regime held political prisoners here. Between 1862 and 1975 some twenty thousand people passed through, and roughly the same number died. The eleven camps are now an open-air museum with Special National Relic status, granted in 2012.

One piece of context worth having: since July 2025 Con Dao is no longer a district of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. Administrative reform turned the archipelago into a special zone (đặc khu) under Ho Chi Minh City. For a traveller this changes exactly one thing — recent Vietnamese sources and tickets now read đặc khu Côn Đảo, TP. Hồ Chí Minh.

You can assemble the history day yourself or buy it: half-day at four hours, full day with lunch at six to eight. Guided is easier. A guide supplies the context the signage does not, and walks you through eleven camps in an order that makes sense.

The Eleven Camps

Inside Nhà tù Côn Đảo, the pieces that matter:

1. Phu Hai — oldest and largest, laid out by the French in 1862. Ten main cell blocks in stone.
2. Phu Son — built later, and kept presentable for foreign delegations.
3. Phu Tuong — home of the French tiger cages of 1940: 120 cells of 1.45 by 2.5 metres, five to twelve people chained to the floor in each. A grille overhead let guards pour lime down, beat prisoners with poles, and open the cells to the rain. The hardest part of the complex to walk through.
4. Phu Binh — the American tiger cages of 1971: 384 roofless cells under open sun, built with US support in the last years of the war.
5. Phu An, Phu Phong, Phu Cuong and the rest — communal barracks and service buildings.

In 1970 congressman Tom Harkin and photographer Tom Charles Fox got inside Phu Tuong on an inspection visit. Two months later their photographs of emaciated prisoners ran in Life Magazine, and the resulting scandal accelerated the rethinking of American policy in the South.

• Hours: 7:30-11:30 and 13:30-17:00
• Ticket: 40,000 VND (~$1.55) covering Phu Hai, Phu Tuong and Phu Binh. A cut-down 20,000 VND version covers the cemetery and individual sites
• Time needed: two and a half to three hours for the key points

Hang Duong Cemetery and Vo Thi Sau

Nghĩa trang Hàng Dương is Vietnam's most significant memorial cemetery after Truong Son. It holds 1,994 graves, and those are only the dead whose remains could be identified after 1975. Total deaths across 113 years are estimated at twenty thousand.

The grave people come for belongs to Võ Thị Sáu (1933-1952), a schoolgirl from the south who threw a grenade at a French officer and was executed on Con Dao at nineteen. She became a national heroine, and her grave a pilgrimage site: every evening between 11 pm and 1 am dozens of Vietnamese arrive with flowers, fruit and white clothing. This is a living folk practice, not a tourist attraction.

The Con Dao Museum

Bảo tàng Côn Đảo opened in 2010 in a purpose-built hall on Nguyễn Huệ, next to the prison complex. Two thousand exhibits inside: dioramas of prison life, documents, photographs, prisoners' possessions, and the island's history from Marco Polo's notes onward. Hours 7:00-11:30 and 13:30-17:00, ticket 20,000 VND (~$0.75), an hour to ninety minutes to walk it.

A Half-Day Route That Works

If you are doing this without a guide, this sequence holds up:

Buying it instead costs 600,000-800,000 VND (~$23-31) per person in a group, or 1,500,000-2,000,000 VND (~$58-77) private with a driver. Book through your hotel reception or the park office. Everything else worth seeing on the island is in the Con Dao attractions guide.

Turtle Tours: the Rarest Thing Here

If there is one reason to come to Con Dao between April and October, it is sea turtles. The archipelago is the biggest green turtle (Chelonia mydas) nesting ground in all of Southeast Asia. Six hundred to nine hundred females return each season, close to a thousand in record years. Across the decade from 2016 to 2025 rangers rescued and incubated more than 20,800 clutches and sent over 1.5 million hatchlings into the ocean.

The 2026 season opened early. By the end of March rangers had logged 48 nests on Hòn Bảy Cạnh, and on the night of 30 March six females came ashore at once — the year's record at that point.

The Season

Nesting runs April to October and peaks June to September. Females return to the beach where they hatched twenty-five to thirty years earlier, dig a pit at night, lay 80-120 eggs and go back to the water. Fifty to sixty days later the hatchlings emerge and run for the sea, with rangers escorting as many batches as they can so crabs and birds do not get them.

Almost all of it happens on Hòn Bảy Cạnh. Smaller colonies use Hòn Tre Lớn and Hòn Cau.

The Day Trip: Releasing Hatchlings

If sleeping in a ranger barracks is not for you, take the daytime turtle release tour instead. The boat runs out to Hòn Bảy Cạnh in the morning, the station briefs you, and hatchlings that emerged overnight go into the ocean around five in the afternoon.

• Duration: 8:00-19:00
• Price: 800,000-1,200,000 VND per person (~$31-46)
• Included: boat, lunch, guide, insurance
• Season: June-October, whenever clutches are ready
• Priced separately: the park charges 50,000 VND (~$1.90) a head for ranger supervision at the release itself — if you organise your own boat, that is the one unavoidable fee

Less atmospheric than the overnight, and far easier to get. The chance of watching hatchlings sprint for the water is genuinely high.

The Overnight on Hon Bay Canh

Go all in and you get a night on the island with the rangers. The boat leaves in the afternoon and returns at first light. Timings are close to identical across operators, because the park sets them:

• 15:30-16:00 — meet at the tourist pier, cross to Hòn Bảy Cạnh
• 16:00-17:30 — snorkeling off the station or a mangrove walk
• 17:30-19:00 — dinner with the rangers
• 19:00-22:00 — briefing and turtle talk, then the first walk onto the beach
• 22:00-04:00 — the night watch, if females come ashore
• 05:30-06:00 — releasing the hatchlings that emerged overnight
• 06:15-07:00 — breakfast and the ride back

Some operators stretch the programme to midday, adding the hike to the 1884 lighthouse. Confirm the return time if you fly out the same day: Cỏ Ống airport is at the far end of the island.

Twenty-Four Beds a Night, and Why That Number Runs Everything

The ranger station's capacity is written into park rules as two numbers: 48 people during the day and 24 overnight. In daylight the island functions much like any other excursion stop. After dark, only two dozen people are on it. A handful of slots exist on Hòn Tre Lớn and Hòn Cau as well, but nesting there is a fraction of Bay Canh and not worth planning around.

Multiply 24 by the roughly 180 nights of the season and you get about four and a half thousand places a year. That is the total number of people who can physically watch a turtle bury a clutch on the largest nesting beach in Southeast Asia. Everything else follows from it: the two-month queue, the deposits, and the fact that improvising on arrival does not work here.

There is no lottery — it is first come, first served. Three ways in:

1. Direct with the park office — 29 Võ Thị Sáu, condaopark.com.vn, tourism line +84 983 830 669. Cheapest, but expect a phone call or an email exchange in imperfect English.
2. Through local operators — Con Dao Trip, Con Dao Dive Center, The Secret Côn Đảo. A 10-20% markup buys you English and confirmation over a messenger app.
3. Through booking platforms — Klook, divui, fme.travel. A 30-40% markup buys card payment and confirmation within a day.

What it costs as of August 2026:

• All-inclusive local operator package — 1,800,000-2,300,000 VND (~$69-88)
• Booking platforms and extended programmes — 2,500,000-3,500,000 VND (~$96-135)
• Assembling it yourself: 1,500,000 VND for the boat both ways for the group, plus 450,000-550,000 VND per person to the ranger for the night guiding, plus 50,000 VND for the hatchling release

A package covers the boat transfer, dinner and breakfast, the night on the station, a ranger guide and insurance. Understand what the accommodation is: fan rooms sleeping six to eight, hammocks or your own tent, a cold-water shower, no air conditioning. There are fewer fan rooms than hammocks and they go first.

A separate budget line exists for the park's multi-day turtle conservation programmes: 11,700,000 to 20,200,000 VND (~$450-777) depending on length. That is volunteer work with the station rather than an excursion.

The Rules on the Beach

This is not a zoo, and whether a clutch happens at all depends on how the people present behave.

Rangers deliver the briefing early in the evening, in English. Listen properly: the fines are real, and people who break the rules get put on the first morning boat off the island.

Boats for the overnight leave from and return to the pier in Con Son town, so that is the sensible place to sleep the nights either side — five minutes away by scooter.

Cycling: the Loop Around the Island

Con Dao has exactly one set of traffic lights. If that sentence interests you, you already understand why a bicycle works here. The island's main road, the eastern route, runs twenty-five kilometres along the coast from Cỏ Ống airport in the north to Bến Đầm port in the south. Since 2022 a western route has joined it: another twenty-five kilometres from Bến Đầm to national park headquarters, through jungle and past viewpoints.

Join the two and you have a full circuit of about fifty kilometres with a couple of climbs. That is a proper day tour.

What it costs in 2026:

• Ordinary bicycle — 50,000-100,000 VND a day (~$1.90-3.85)
• E-bike — 200,000-300,000 VND a day (~$7.70-11.50), available at The Secret Côn Đảo and Six Senses
• Guided ride, six hours with lunch — 800,000-1,500,000 VND per person (~$31-58)

Ride early, six to ten, or late, five to seven. Between April and August the middle of the day is simply too hot and the road shimmers. Carry water: on the western route there is nowhere to buy any for fifteen kilometres.

Stops along the way: Đầm Trầu beach right beneath the flight path, where aircraft pass low overhead; Côn Sơn town with its market and museum; An Hải beach next to town; Bến Đầm port and its boats; and park headquarters on the western route before the jungle run home.

2026 Prices in One Table

Everything you need to budget the tour side of a Con Dao trip. Rate used: ~26,000 VND = $1.

A Week's Worth

Five tours across seven days adds up like this: one full-day sea trip to Hon Bay Canh at 1,000,000 VND, two fun dives at 3,600,000, the So Ray to Ong Dung trek at 700,000, a half-day history tour at 700,000, and a daytime turtle release at 1,000,000. Total 7,000,000 VND, about $270 per person on tours alone.

Swap the daytime release for the overnight and add roughly another million dong. Drop the diving and you save 3,600,000, which brings the whole week under $130.

Operators: Where to Book

Seven booking channels serve the island, each with a different strength and markup.

Picking Between Them

• Snorkeling and island hopping — Con Dao Trip or your hotel reception. The product is identical; the difference is the intermediary's cut.
• Diving — PADI centres only. Ask about current insurance certification before you sign anything.
• Trekking and turtles — cheapest direct with the park, easiest via Klook with card payment.
• History — any platform, or an English-speaking guide; you can also do the sites unguided with an audio guide on your phone.

If turtles are the reason you are going, book at least two months out and go through the park office rather than a reseller. Slots are scarce, intermediaries take the first ones, and the park keeps some backcomposite of r/VietnamTravel discussions, 2026

Cash Versus Card

Most local operators are cash businesses. Visa and Mastercard terminals exist at Six Senses and Con Dao Dive Center; Klook and Vietravel take payment online. Everything else — boat owners, ranger fees, the park office window — wants dong in hand. There are ATMs in Con Son town, but they are few and they run dry on busy weekends, so draw your cash on the mainland before you fly.

Season Matrix: What Runs When

Worth repeating: sea tours and trekking are almost always out of phase with each other.

Which gives four workable windows:

• February-March — snorkeling, diving, trekking and cycling all at once. No turtles, everything else at its best.
• April-May — the same, plus the first nests. The most versatile stretch of the year.
• June-August — sea tours winding down, turtle season at its peak, trekking closed.
• September-October — history and turtles only. Boats stay in port for days at a time.

Month-by-month detail sits in the Con Dao weather guide.

What to Pack

Minimum kit for touring Con Dao:

• Closed shoes — for trekking; the park turns away flip-flops
• Your own mask and snorkel — rentals are fine, yours fit better and are cleaner
• Oxybenzone-free sunscreen — ordinary sunscreen is not allowed in the water at dive sites
• A torch with a red filter — mandatory for anything turtle-related
• A light rain shell — morning downpours happen even in the dry season
• A dry bag for camera and phone; the boats are open and everything gets wet
• Basic first aid: motion sickness tablets, repellent, antiseptic, painkillers

A fuller first-trip list for Vietnam lives in the country checklist.

After a day on the water, in the jungle or up all night with turtles, your shoulders will want attention. Spas operate at Six Senses, Poulo Condor, and a couple of massage places on Nguyễn An Ninh. Comparisons across the country are in the Vietnam spa guide.

FAQ — Con Dao tours

Where to Next

People come to Con Dao for specific activities rather than for a resort: for reefs with thirty metres of visibility, for jungle with endemic species, for a chapter of Vietnamese history that exists nowhere else in the country. The common thread is lead time. Diving books two to three weeks out, the turtle overnight two months, and everything else can be arranged once you land.

Read next: Con Dao guide · Con Dao attractions · Con Dao beaches · Weather and seasons · Getting around