ATC Hotel local standard
Our brief comments:
The ATC hotel is tiny - a single-story four-room French villa built in 1929 with a roofed terrace surrounded by a rampant garden in the process of overwhelming the building.

It's in the centre of Con Son's small town overlooking the sea, but the garden jungle is so thick you'd be lucky to get more than a glimpse of the sea from the front rooms. An attractive feature is a small orchid garden at the rear of the property.

It's the only hotel on Con Son island with a bit of character. Rooms are small and simple, with only basic facilities - no bathtub or telephones - but are clean and quite attractive. There is no restaurant as such: meals are prepared and cooked in an adjacent kitchen and served on the terrace.

Don't expect anything resembling a conventional mainland hotel - until the rest of the world catches on, Con Dao is way off the beaten track.

Further along the seafront, the ATC company has two wooden stilt houses in an attractive garden, each with two rooms with large bathrooms and the usual facilities. At present, logistics make it impractical for use by international visitors - there is no restaurant, no telephone and the resident housemaid speaks only Vietnamese.

However, a restaurant is under construction nearby. With that, and the other problems ironed out, it could be a good alternative to a conventional hotel.