Con Co Island

After two to three hours at sea, heading east from the port of Cửa Việt, a green speck slowly rises on the horizon. It is not a white cliff or a long beach. It is a dark patch of green, standing alone in the open water. That is Cồn Cỏ Island.

The island is small, only about 2.3 square kilometers in area. It lies 13 to 17 nautical miles from the mainland. Yet every square kilometer holds a strange world of its own.

Cồn Cỏ was formed by volcanic eruptions more than 40,000 years ago. That is why its shore has no smooth white sand. Instead there are black basalt ledges, rough and uneven, worn down by waves over thousands of years. The small beaches are made of crushed coral and scallop shell, not river sand. Stepping onto them feels very different from an ordinary beach.

Nearly three quarters of the island is natural forest. The island's information portal describes the woods as primary forest, with abundant plant cover across the island's wooded land today. The forest is also home to an endemic crab, the cua đá, which is strictly protected because it is in danger of extinction. Here the crab is something to watch in its natural setting, not to catch or to eat.

The Cồn Cỏ island marine protected area was set up in 2009. It covers 4,532 hectares. A planning report for Quảng Trị province records 954 marine species in the area. It also counts 137 species of coral and 96 of seaweed. Numbers like these say a great deal about the ecological value of one small island that few people know.

But Cồn Cỏ is not only nature. During the Vietnam War, the island was a forward outpost of the North, guarding the sea lane to the south. That memory remains in the trenches, tunnels, pillboxes, fortifications and gun emplacements still standing on the island. It remains in the names of places on the island. Two are called Hà Đông and Hải Phòng. Another one is called Hanoi. It remains in the Fatherland Flagpole, the military medical bunker, the memorial and the Tradition Room.

In 2004, a government decree made Cồn Cỏ an island administrative unit of Quảng Trị province. After the war the island had been almost empty of people. Today the island has residents, a local government, schools and a clinic, and tourism is developing in a way that keeps its natural ecology intact.

On the island, layers of memory and nature lie side by side on the same ground. The Fatherland Flagpole stands high, looking out over the open sea. The military medical bunker and the memorial sit quietly under the forest canopy. Footpaths run through the primary forest to small beaches called Bến Nghè and Bến Tranh, where waves break on basalt and the water is so clear that every coral reef below can be seen.

The ship turns back toward the mainland. The green speck on the sea grows smaller, and it is easy to see why people call this island an outpost.