Shackled Men and Geckos On Walls

[Con Dao, 7/10/24]

The motorbike man tricked me into an out of the way hotel, but it’s OK. Exiled to Đức Hường on Võ Thị Sáu, I must walk past the 1862 mass grave each morning. This dawn, I was steered into its cowshed to pray. Though standing below ground level among ghosts, I wasn’t spooked. To thank them was the least I could do.

Tomorrow, I’ll move to the center of town. Still in the suburb of hell, I see a kid with a cardboard box on his head. An older girl with him is collecting recyclables to sell. Inside Pé Xíu Café, men play carom billiards. Returning from Ma Thiên Lãnh Bridge, domestic tourists file past. It’s named after a Korean mountain where thousands of Chinese troops died in 666 during a failed invasion. In the 1930’s, over 350 Viets perished here building a bridge that’s never finished. If similarly overworked on an empty belly, you’d drop dead too in this heat.

A truckload of soldiers just rolled by. Though Con Dao is strategic, it didn’t appear so to Marco Polo in 1294, “Upon leaving the island of Java, and steering a course between south and south-west, seven hundred miles, you arrive at two islands. The larger is named Sondur, and the other Kondur. Both being uninhabited, it is unnecessary to say more respecting them.” Though it had been settled for over 4,000 years, who knows if anyone was around when Polo swung by. Kudos to the Italian for getting its name exact.

Kondur is Côn Đảo. In Malay, it means Calabash. Dropping by in 1516, Fernão Pires de Andrade said this was a great place to buy chickens and sea turtles, and to get fresh water, of course. The first bard to show up was Luís Vaz de Camões. After Con Dao, the author of Os Lusíadas popped into Vung Tau before landing in Macau.

I wouldn’t mind some bacalhau casserole or piri piri chicken right about now! Of course, I’m spoiled. Yesterday, I had boiled fatty pork dipped in fermented shrimp paste at some Nam Định joint. Hearing my accent, the waitress had to ask, “Which province are you from, uncle?”

“I came from Vung Tau.”

Knowing this didn’t satisfy her, I fessed up when it’s time to pay, “You could hear my Nam Định accent, correct?”

“That’s right!” she smiled.

Origins and accents always matter. Con Dao eateries often clarify their cuisine’s provenance, so this is Long Xuyên and not Saigon broken rice with pork chop, for example, and here’s where you get Nghệ An rice gruel or beanthreads with eel.

Before my late lunch yesterday, I visited the infamous tiger cages, then Vo Thi Sau’s grave. The teenaged martyr has become this island’s patron saint. Newlyweds ask for her blessings. Pilgrims leave replicas of high heels, conical hats, purses and dollars, etc. They also offer her real food, from imported cookies to entire suckling pigs.

At the tiger cages, visitors often made sure their heroic dead didn’t lack nicotine. That’s why there’s this sign, “WAX STATUES ARE VERY FLAMMABLE. WE SUGGEST VALUED VISITORS DON’T PLACE LIT CIGARETTES ON WAX STATUES.” It’s bad enough to be starved and tortured while alive. Decades after death, they don’t need to be torched, if only symbolically and inadvertently.

How lethal was Con Dao? During 1928-1932, 800 prisoners died of all causes, according to French records. In 1938, only 22 perished, however. Peter Zinoman sums it up, “There is no reason to think that most prisoners who died in captivity were sick or on the verge of death at the time of their arrests. Rather, it was the brutality and squalor of the prison system itself that weakened and ultimately killed them.”

In 1943, head warden Charles Tisseyre reported, “The month of my arrival, 172 deaths. In cells for 25 or 30 detainees, I found 110, 120, 130.” [“Le mois de mon arrivée, 172 décès; c’étaient des locaux pour 25 ou 30 détenus ; j’en ai trouvé 110, 120, 130.”] Of course, this was near the end of WWII when even those in France barely ate. Photos of skeletal Jews in German concentration camps must be considered in context. Millions starved to death worldwide.

After the French left, Con Dao was used by the South Vietnamese to lock up Communists and other political prisoners. In Just As I Thought, Grace Paley recounts the case of Thieu Thi Tao. At 17-years-old, she was arrested “for spreading Communist propaganda” while still a student at Marie Currie, a school for Saigon’s elite:

In prison, Thieu Thi Tao was beaten on the head with truncheons. Her head was locked between two steel bars. Water was forced down her throat. She was suspended above the ground.

[…]

Late in 1969, Thieu Thi Tao was transferred to the island prison of Con Son, along with her sister, Tan, who has since been released.

[…]

She was one of five women in her cage. A bucket of lime stood above each cell. At different times, the women were doused with lime or sprayed with tear gas. During their menstrual periods, they were given no means to keep themselves clean.

While no one has disproved these facts, such a summary would enrage those who suffered at Communist hands on the South Vietnamese side. What about those who were tortured or killed in “reeducation camps” after 1975?! The bigger point, though, is that people everywhere throughout history have been punished most barbarically for their beliefs. That so many Vietnamese could risk such suffering while knowing what their forefathers had gone through is a testimony to their character. Deficient of such, nations won’t last.

The South Vietnamese were suckered by American bullshit about freedom, democracy and fighting Communism. In WWII, Uncle Sam was Stalin’s ally. They then divided Europe, straight down the middle, into two fiefdoms! After the Fall of Saigon, Samuel backed Pol Pot at the UN and moved most of his factories to Communist China. Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden have all had photos taken in front of a giant bust of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. Afghans and Ukrainians have also been duped. Americans should know by now Sam only protects war profiteers and Jews.

Though defeated, South Vietnam lingers in books and songs. At Con Dao’s main market, I heard “Rừng Lá Thấp” [“Forest of Low Hanging Leaves”] being played as shopkeepers set up. A snippet:

On the tape recorder, she has just sang,
"My fate is to love the suffering soldier far from home."
Amid the old forest the singing voice rises,
But in that old forest I can see nothing. 

[Từ máy thu thanh cô nàng vừa ca:
“Trọn kiếp yêu anh lính khổ xa nhà”
Giữa rừng già vang tiếng hát thật cao,
Nhưng giữa rừng già tôi có thấy gì đâu.]

More:

Why not sing for mothers missing their distant sons?
Or sing for those who have just lain down last evening?

[Sao không hát cho những bà mẹ hằng đêm nhớ con xa?
Hay hát cho những người vừa nằm xuống chiều qua?]

Thirty years ago, hearing songs about the ARVN soldier could get you arrested, so there’s progress. Each historical horror must be reexamined and mourned.

Near the end of this article, I had to go grab another late lunch. It was past 4PM. Finishing my wonton soup with meatballs and pork, I tossed a black dog lurking by my table a bone, but he didn’t even sniff it. Amazing, today’s Con Dao beasts!

I know someone who spent over a decade in a “reeducation camp.” It took months after his release to stop seeing geckos on walls as rare sources of protein. Amused, disgusted, enraged and ashamed, he just had to laugh.

[Phú Tường Prison in Con Dao, 7/9/24]

[Offerings to Võ Thị Sáu in Con Dao, 7/9/24]

[Phú Tường Prison in Con Dao, 7/9/24]

[Con Dao, 7/9/24]