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Published: November 15th 2006
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Well its been several days since my last entry and I have a lot of stuff to share with you guys. It feels great to be out of the big city Saigon and into what can be described as relative country side but never really leaving a built up area. I left Saigon on Tues. Nove 7th and headed for Rach Gia on the south coast of vietnam to catch the fast boat to Phu Quoc Island and a week of beach bliss.
The bus trip was another 8 hour adventure of mostly under repair roads, lots of dirt and gravel , dusty conditions with more bumps and pot holes than you would believe. The Alaska Highway in comparison was a four lane, paved super highway. The bus was packed shoulder to shoulder which seems to be the norm rather than the exception so being shy to touch body parts with strangers is certainly a handicap one must soon get over. We must have crossed over a hundred bridges of various sizes and states of repair, all having catapolting bumps on either end so the bus had to slow to a crawl so the people in the back seats wouldnt
be jettisoned out the roof. All these bridges spanned the multiple tributaries of the mightly Mekong Delta and the many canals built many years ago to establish the thousands of rice paddies that line the road all over the Mekong Delta.
My plan was to stay over night in Rach Gia and catch the hyrofoil fast boat the next morning to Phu Quoc Island, but as luck would have it a local vietnamese woman who spoke english befriended me on the bus and after a few hours of jarring and bumpy conversation she invited me to visit her family home in Ha Tien which is about a 3 hour further bus trip beyond Rach Gia. So all in all it was a 9 hour day of buses. Ha Tien is a beautiful town of 90,000 on the border with Cambodia, primarily a fishing village. We actually journeyed through forested and agriculturalareas to get to Ha Tien so in reality it was the first time i saw real agrarian country side. My travel companion took me to the towns hotel to check in ( $10 ). For the size of the town it was a 4 star hotel and very
very good service. The manager spoke very good english as well. By this time next year there is suppose to be a new border crossing between Vietnam and Cambodia at this point which would make travelling the south much easier. After checking into my room i was introduced to a lovely, friendly and outgoing vietnamese family and spend at least 2 hours a day for the next 3 days teaching the young children English. They soaked it up like a sponge. During the day we did the town on motorbike and hung out at the local beach then feasted on yet another sea food dinner.....mmmmmmmm, this is getting to be a habit. Ha Tien was a pleasant side trip and well worth the experience and the new friends that I made.
After, 3 days it was time to head onto Phu Quoc Island and the long, almost desolate beaches. I journeyed back to Rach Gia with Tee, my bus companion and we parted ways, she went back to Saigon and I jumped the boat to paradise. As it turned out, the boat i wanted to catch was under repair so I had to shack up in Rach Gia for
the night and catch the next morning departure at 8:15. The Evening in Rach Gia was spent sitting in the town square watching mothers and children play and exercise around a statute of one of their many ancient war heroes. As usual i was a source of attraction and many children came over to stare at me or mothers brought thier children over to touch me ( for good luck I think, at least I hope)
The Cruise across the Thailand Sea the next morning took 3 hours and was fairly uneventfull except for the large swells that kicked up for about the last hour. Several passengers were sick but me being an old sailar rather enjoyed being tossed about. Lots of room on the boat and i walked around outside with the freshe sea breeze blowing me about.
On arrival in Phu Quoc Island at the small town of An Thoi i jumped in a mini van with a number of other commonwealth travellers and headed north to Long Beach and the bungalow guest houses that lined the beach south of Duong Duong, the largest town on the island. 20 minutes found us being escorted through the
row of beach resorts and bungalows until we found one I liked. I settled for a gorgeous thatched roof bungalow over looking the ocean which cost really bigs bucks ( 12 dollars a night) If this place isnt Shangra La i dont know what is. You simply have to see it and experience it to believe the beauty and naturalness of it all...I hope my pics will describe what words could not......
I will be leaving here tomorrow on my way to Cambodia and leaving lovely, friendly and quickly entering the modern world Vietnam behind at least for the next few months. See you in a few days....😊
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Shari
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What, no lobster?
Hey Magic Bill, Wonderful pictures and reporting on your adventure to date! I would be green with envy...ah heck, I am green with envy about the fantastic beaches. Would love to know if the types of fish you have been eating are familiar to you or not. We ate much fish in Brazil that was totally unknown to us. Also had a door-to-door lobster salesman, but the lobsters were smaller, not the Maine variety. What seafood are you eating? And, do the locals drink the green coconut milk? Also, are you discovering "strange fruits"? No snow on the ground here yet, but it's creeping down the hills around the lakes. How's the mosquito factor?