Phu Quoc Island

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This place is absolutely stunning. Beaches after beautiful beaches. I didn't think anything will be much better than Thai beaches off Ko Samui and Ko Pagnan but this is absoultely amazing. The other half of the charm is the the lack of development (at least for now) of most of the island.

Best way to get around the island; motorbiking on the red dirt roads that link the island's several small hamlets. I did a tour of the northen part of the island (130km approx 7hrs incl. swimming and lunch) on a motorbike. There are not much roads so once you get on to the proper one, you don't really get lost. Ofcourse finding the proper road requires some inquiries from the friendly locals along the way.

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Photos

Ferry Ticket
06-06-06 + 019191 = ??? I don't know... thought it was kinda neat.

Filling Up
These Russian motorbikes are great on gas, a full tank (3.75l, USD3.50) goes for about 120km or so.

Waterfalls!
At the enterance of the waterfall. I would have never found it on my own w/o help from my neighbour (Stefan) who led me there on his bike.

Waterfalls!
More of a stream running over lime stones rocks than a waterfall. But it was quite fun exploring it as it goes on for about 300m or so.

Waterfalls!
At the end of the road. We decided to stop going futher as there seems to be nothing ahead but the jungle (and bugs)

Dam
Biking on the dam there was awsome! water on bothsides of you and you are riding on this 10 foot wide road.

Long Beach
This is what I woke up to everyday. The picture is shot from my varenda of my bungalow. Can't be beat for $9/night.

My Bike!
My transporation to/from town and around the island. Russian make and need to crank start the engine evertime but it runs fine once it gets started.

Doung Dong
Morning market here is a zoo. Hard to manuvere a bike in there.

Beach!
There is a beautiful stretch of beach there but we could not figure out how to get there so we just have to admire it from the otherside. Check out the scarf which doubles as face mask for dusty roads and fisherman's hat which provides excellent screen from the sun 360 degrees.

Phou Quoc Road
Typical road on the island. This is actually a good one as the ones up north are much more muddy and bumpy.

Deserted Beach
Here is a beautiful and deserted strech of beach. It is the reward for riding 45 min away from town over some interesting obsticles (e.g. 4ft wide bridges w/o safety, mud fields, etc.)

Last shot from my now defunk camera
This is one of the last shots before water got into my "waterproof" camera. Stupid Pentax. It is under warranty but I'm in Vietnam and warranty is in the US so I bought a second hand Cannon in Saigon to replace it for now. Unfortuantely, this means that I was unable to record other amazing shots during the rest of my trip in Phu Quoc.

Comments

[Mr. T]

No more Russian
The bikes in your pictures are either Japanese or Chinese, most likely Japanese. Not Russian. South Vietnamese ppl are not big fan of the USSR's products.

[bryan]

island
where is the deserted beach?? give me a side or name? i was at ong lang and dai beaches on the west side. we had big plans (always big plans when you're travelling--notice?) to hike over the mtn to the north east side (of course that never happened)

[bryan]

not that stan really cares..but id agree. from what i remember the cheapest ones were chinese (assembled in vietnam--looked at buying one used). there is a company (FDI? or SDI?) that makes more expensive vietnam ones--and there are the japanese ones that are a joint venture and more expensive than the otehr two makes. hey stan, if you have an accident or puncture they'll come right to you (flag anyone down and do your best to explain you need a repair dude) and fix it for fuking nothing (or they'll get it in the back of a truck and bring it to the shop--again for nothing). i seemed to smash mine every couple of days. i often wondered what it was that made the bike expensive (relative) when all the parts i bought were so friggin cheap.