Con Dao Prison and Museum: Ticket, Hours, Hang Duong Cemetery

The Con Dao prison sites, the Con Dao Museum and Hang Duong Cemetery are all in and around the town on Con Dao’s main island. The museum and the French-era camps are a short walk apart, Hang Duong is about 1 km from the museum, and only Phu Binh needs transport. One ticket, 60,000 VND per person as listed by the relic centre in November 2026, covers five sites: the museum, the French tiger cages, Phu Hai prison, the American tiger cages at Phu Binh and the former Governor’s House. A morning is enough for all five before the midday break. Hang Duong Cemetery, where Vo Thi Sau is buried, is free and stays open until midnight, which is why many people visit it in the evening.

Con Dao is no longer part of Ba Ria–Vung Tau. Since 1 July 2025 it has been a special zone (dac khu) of Ho Chi Minh City, the city’s only one. The sites are run by the Con Dao National Relic Conservation Centre, formed by merging the old Con Dao Relic Management Board and the Con Dao Museum.

What was the Con Dao prison?

For 113 years, from 1862 to 1975, the French colonial administration and later the US-backed government in Saigon used Con Dao as a penal island for political prisoners. The relic centre puts the number held there over that time in the hundreds of thousands. The camps, the cemetery and the related sites were declared a special national relic in 2012 (Decision 548/QD-TTg), after being recognised as nationally important in 1979.

What you visit today is a set of separate camps and buildings in and around the town, not one walled prison. Most camps have names starting with “Phu”: Phu Hai, Phu Son, Phu Tuong, Phu Binh and others. Five of the sites are open on the combined ticket. Others, such as Phu Son, stand next door but are not on it.

How much is the Con Dao prison and museum ticket?

60,000 VND per person, for one combined ticket that covers all five sites. The relic centre’s own ticket site lists two prices, 60,000 and 30,000 VND, and Ho Chi Minh City’s People’s Council approved a 60,000 VND fee for the Con Dao prison relic on 27 August 2026; the report did not say when it took effect. Before the change the ticket was 50,000 VND, the price paid in visitors’ videos up to August 2026.

• What it covers: the Con Dao Museum, the French tiger cages (Phu Tuong camp), Phu Hai prison, Phu Binh camp (the American tiger cages) and the Governor’s House (Nha Chua Dao).
• Half price, 30,000 VND: the elderly, people with severe disabilities, people with revolutionary merit and some other groups set by law. You must show an ID card or similar at the gate. If you can’t, you pay full price and the reduced ticket is not refunded.
• Children: a draft of the 2026 fee rules made under-6s free, but we could not see the final text. Ask at the counter.
• Hang Duong Cemetery: no ticket, and parking there is free.

In visitors’ videos people buy the ticket at the counter by the museum on Nguyen Hue street, then keep it, because staff check it at each site. The relic centre also sells the same ticket online through its booking site.

What are the opening hours?

For the museum and the prison sites there is no current timetable from the relic centre online, and the published hours differ by half an hour. The Vietnam Airlines travel guide gives 7 am to 11:30 am and 1:30 pm to 5 pm; an older VnExpress guide gives 7:30 to 11:30 and 2 pm to 5 pm. Both agree on the long midday break. Plan on mornings from 7:30 and afternoons from about 2 pm.

Hang Duong Cemetery has official hours on its own information site: 7 am to 11:30 am and 1 pm to midnight, every day including public holidays and Tet. Expect closures for official ceremonies. On 3 May 2025, the 50th anniversary of Con Dao’s liberation, the cemetery closed to visitors from 3 pm to 10 pm, and several sites closed around 27 July (War Invalids and Martyrs Day) in 2023.

Site guides explain the camps. A 2019 notice from the relic management set guided starts at Phu Hai every half hour from 7:30 to 10 am and from 2 pm to 4 pm, and in visitors’ videos from 2025 and 2026 people still join a guide’s group or wait for the next one. Large groups can book their own guide.

A half-day route around the prison sites

Everything except Phu Binh is within walking distance in the old French quarter of town. Distances below are by road, measured on OpenStreetMap.

1. Con Dao Museum at opening, about 7:30 am. Buy the ticket here and start with the overview.
2. French tiger cages (Phu Tuong camp), about 300 m from the museum.
3. Governor’s House, then Phu Hai prison, about 300 m apart; Phu Hai is about 600 m from the museum. Phu Son camp is next to Phu Hai.
4. Phu Binh camp (American tiger cages), about 3 km by road from Phu Hai, so take a taxi or motorbike. Aim to be done by 11:30.
5. Hang Duong Cemetery later in the day. It is about 1 km from the museum and under 1 km from the town market.

If you only have a morning, this order fits: museum and French cages at once, Phu Hai and the Governor’s House next, Phu Binh last. Five sites in four hours is comfortable; trying to squeeze them into the afternoon session between 2 pm and 5 pm is tighter.

What is in the Con Dao Museum?

The museum on Nguyen Hue street holds close to 2,000 documents, objects and photographs, according to the relic centre. The displays cover the natural setting and people of Con Dao, then the prison system and the prisoners’ resistance across both wars. Start here: the museum gives you the order of events before you see the cells.

Phu Hai prison and the tiger cages: what you see

Phu Hai and Phu Son

Phu Hai was built by the French in 1862. Bao Ha Tinh and Bao Lao Cai both call it the largest camp on the island, and Bao Ha Tinh also the oldest. Its cells were built very low and held dozens of prisoners at a time, according to Bao Lao Cai. Phu Hai closed on 1 March 2024 for restoration work planned to take about ten months; it is back on the ticket, SGGP reported a delegation visiting it in July 2026, and visitors’ videos from 2025 and 2026 show it open. Phu Son, another French-era camp, is next door but is not one of the five ticketed sites.

The French tiger cages (Phu Tuong camp)

The “tiger cages” built in 1940 inside Phu Tuong camp have 120 isolation cells and 60 open-roofed yards, with iron bars across the top of each cell. According to Bao Ha Tinh, the “prison within a prison” layout kept them hidden for 30 years.

The American tiger cages (Phu Binh camp)

Phu Binh, built in 1971, has 384 cells in four blocks (AB, CD, EF and GH), bare concrete cells under a low roof. It is about 2.3 km by road from the French tiger cages, so it is the one site you will need transport for.

The Governor’s House

The Governor’s House (Nha Chua Dao, literally “house of the island chief”) stands about 300 m from Phu Hai. In visitors’ videos the rooms and several of the camps contain lifelike wax figures of prisoners and guards. If you are visiting with children, it is worth knowing in advance.

Hang Duong Cemetery: who is buried there

Hang Duong covers nearly 20 hectares and holds 1,922 graves, of which 714 have names and 1,208 are unnamed, according to the cemetery’s official information site. It was opened by the French after the older cemetery at Hang Keo filled up in the 1930s and early 1940s. The same site estimates that about 20,000 prisoners are buried on Con Dao, though not all of them at Hang Duong.

The cemetery is divided into four zones. Zone A holds mostly graves from before 1945, including those of the revolutionary leader Le Hong Phong and the patriot Nguyen An Ninh. Zone B covers 1945 to 1960 and holds the grave of Vo Thi Sau; its second part, B2, is from the war against the US. Zone C covers 1960 to 1975, and zone D holds remains moved from Hon Cau, Hang Keo and other places on the island. At the centre, the main monument is 21.6 m tall, built from 144 stone slabs, with a 30 m relief of the prison’s history beside it.

Vo Thi Sau’s grave

Vo Thi Sau was born in 1933 in Long Dat district, in the former Ba Ria–Vung Tau province. She joined the resistance against the French at 14 and was executed by firing squad on Con Dao at dawn on 23 January 1952, the first person executed on the island, according to SGGP. She was later named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces. Her grave in zone B is the most visited in the cemetery, and an official ceremony marks her death anniversary each 23 January.

Visiting Hang Duong at night

Many Vietnamese visitors come to Vo Thi Sau’s grave in the evening, and the cemetery’s hours, until midnight, allow it. Expect crowds. In visitors’ videos from 2026, late afternoon and evening are the busiest times, with queues to lay offerings at her grave. To avoid the queues, go earlier in the day.

The cemetery’s suggested route takes about 45 minutes. Start at the ceremony yard in front of the main monument, light incense there, then visit the graves zone by zone, A to D. In visitors’ videos people follow the same order: the monument first, then the path to Vo Thi Sau’s grave in zone B.

Offerings, dress and conduct

• No votive paper. Burning joss paper at the relic sites stopped on 1 October 2023, and since 1 January 2025 every offering at Hang Duong must be a “green basket”: no votive paper, foam, single-use plastic or plastic bags. Fruit, flowers and incense are fine.
• Where to buy: in visitors’ videos, stalls near the cemetery gate sell flowers and ready-made offering baskets, and there are trolleys to wheel the bigger ones in. For Vo Thi Sau, people bring white flowers, and many add a conical hat, a mirror and a comb.
• Dress: the cemetery’s rules ask for decent, neat clothing. No detailed dress code is published.
• Conduct: keep quiet, don’t litter and don’t bring pets. In visitors’ videos people speak softly and keep filming to a minimum.
• Groups: a group that wants a formal ceremony should register one session ahead, in office hours, on +84 254 3830 517.

How to get to Con Dao

By air or by fast ferry. The airport at Co Ong is about 13 km from the museum by road; the ferry port at Ben Dam is about 12 km from the museum and from Hang Duong.

• Flights: Vietnam Airlines (operated by VASCO) flies from Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho. Vietjet resumed flights from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City on 3 December 2025.
• Ferry from Vung Tau: the Thang Long fast ferry (PhuQuoc Express, over 1,000 seats) leaves Vung Tau at 7:30 am and Ben Dam at 1 pm. Standard one-way fares in 2026 were 555,000–790,000 VND on weekdays, 665,000–950,000 VND at weekends and 1,100,000 VND in VIP, with summer discounts (Tuoi Tre). The number of sailings changes with the season, and an 18,000 VND port fee is charged on top. The crossing takes roughly three and a half to four hours.
• Ferry from Ho Chi Minh City: at its launch in March 2025 the Phu Quy Express left Saigon port (former District 4) at 7 am, took nearly six hours and cost 720,000–1,370,000 VND, seat or berth (VOV). Check the current timetable before you book.
• Ferry from Tran De: the shortest sea crossing, about two to two and a half hours from the Mekong Delta coast. Check schedules with the operator.

Don’t plan the relic sites for the morning you arrive by sea: the Vung Tau boat lands in late morning, about when the sites close for lunch. Fly in the day before, or keep the afternoon session for the museum and Hang Duong for the evening.

More to see on Con Dao

For the nature side of the island, see our Con Dao National Park guide. Ma Thien Lanh Bridge, built by hand by prisoners under the French around 1930, is another relic, and Dam Trau beach is the place for an afternoon swim. More places on the island and the coast are in our Vung Tau and Con Dao attractions guide.

Our four-day Con Dao tour includes the museum, Phu Hai, the tiger cages and Hang Duong with a guide on day two, then a boat day to Bay Canh island.

4-Day Con Dao Island Tour for Veterans

4 days 3 nights

Start from:  $367 /person

FAQ

Sources: Con Dao National Relic Conservation Centre ticket site (prices, sites covered, reduced-price groups); Hang Duong Cemetery official information site (hours, rules, zones, route); SGGP on the cemetery platform (April 2026); VOH on the 2026 fee decision and Bao Van Hoa on the draft (April 2026); Thu Vien Phap Luat on the Con Dao special zone; PLO on the Phu Hai closure (March 2024); SGGP (July 2026); PLO on closures and the joss-paper phase-out (2023); Bao Lao Cai on green offering baskets (2024); Znews on the 3 May 2025 closure; SGGP on Vo Thi Sau’s anniversary (January 2026); Bao Ha Tinh (2023) and Bao Lao Cai on the camps; relic management notice on guide times (2019); Vietnam Airlines guide and VnExpress handbook on hours; Tuoi Tre and Nong Nghiep va Moi Truong on the Vung Tau ferry (2026); VOV on the Ho Chi Minh City ferry (2025); Thi Truong Tai Chinh Tien Te on Vietjet flights; distances measured on OpenStreetMap; visitor observations from 70 YouTube channels (2023–2026), counted only where three or more channels agree. Banner photo: sephylmism / Pexels, cropped.