Ma Thien Lanh Brigde Relic

From the center of Con Dao town, following Vo Thi Sau street to the way to Con Dao National Park, visitors will reach Ma Thien Lanh (Ghostly Moutain) Bridge Relic. The French colonialists forced prisoners to build this bridge on a high mountain to pass another side in order to exploit timbers, stone for constructing prisons, offices, etc, and also establish checkpoints in case of prisoners’ breaking out. Prisoners are set to work hard labor with very craggy terrain, very poisonous water; they always suffered from extremely poor diet (or even were left to starve to death), heavy block of stone’s crushing, fallen trees, worked beyond their strength, also suffered from warder’s maltreatment, etc. No sooner had two bridge foundations been constructed than there were 356 dead people (this is only an estimate).

Built-in a craggy, rough position and hundreds of prisoners with their blood, so the bridge was named Ma Thien Lanh, after the Ma Thien Lanh mountain in North Korea with difficult, steep terrain.