Phu Quoc & Con Dao Islands
Vietnam’s two beach islands sit off the southern coast and book-end the country’s sun-and-sand pages. Phu Quoc is the bigger and busier of the two: white-sand beaches fringed with coconut palms, fish-sauce factories you can tour, and the Hon Thom cable car — the world’s longest over-sea gondola, an eight-kilometre arc over turquoise water between tropical islands. Con Dao, further east in the South China Sea, is the antidote: a quiet archipelago of crescent beaches backed by jungle-covered hills, with a difficult colonial-prison history visible in the museums on the main island. Both are reached by short flights from Saigon, and both reward at least three nights.
