Tuan Chau Island

This guide to Tuan Chau Island in Ha Long follows a small octagonal cottage where President Ho Chi Minh retreated starting in 1958, arriving unnoticed while the country assumed he was still in the capital. For decades after, the island stayed cut off from the mainland, with no power line, road or piped water, just fishing boats and sandy tracks. Villagers who watched him arrive saw their own lives stay unchanged for forty years.