Phu Quoc - The Jewel of Vietnam

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Our last stop in Vietnam was Phu Quoc Island. Phu Quoc is a tropical island surrounding by white beach’s and turquoise water and is a great way to while away a few days incidentally, the Vietnamese government is planning to make the island a massive tourist destination, they are building an international airport on the island so that tourists can fly in and out of Phu Quoc without having to go on to the mainland, there is even talk of foreigners not needing a visa to visit Phu Quoc at all and having spoken to an English chap when we were there who owns a guesthouse and bar on the island in very uncharacteristic of Vietnam the local government officials don’t take backhanders unlike everywhere else in the country - so it looks like the government is desperately trying to creature holiday destination for the large travel companies - let’s just hope they do it tastefully so it doesn’t lose its natural charm.

We arrived at the travel agency opposite the ferry terminal with plenty of time to spare, so we order lunch - G orders a plate of French fries and bread and T’s choice was a chicken fried noodle, an hour later we are still waiting, the agency assistants asks for our tickets so dutifully we hand them over. The ferry leaves at one and lunch comes (minus G’s chips) at 12:50 so she puts it into a box, the agent gives our tickets back and we dash across to the ferry.

We board the ferry from Ha Tien, this is a fairly fast ferry and once we leave the port the ‘captain’ drop’s a gear and we’re off. After 20 minutes the rain comes down and it appears we are speeding towards a storm, the windows were like rivers as water - a mixture of sea and rain stream down them. Onboard was fairly comfortable but we were annoyed with the travel woman in Ha Tien having changed our seat numbers without our knowledge to the awful ones at the back - annoyingly knowing that we have probably paid double to everyone else on this boat and we get the rubbish seats, so we sit down and spread ourselves out so we have the ‘bench’ to ourselves and watch a crazy Vietnamese carry on style movie - the duration of the ferry ride is 2 hours.

We pull into the ferry terminal in Phu Quoc and have a scrabble up the gang plank looking like a pregnant snail (two bags, backpack on my back and a little one on the front) and are faced with a massive walk to land, the pier is about 400 - 500m and its raining so heavily that the walkway is reminiscent of a swimming pool, 10 minutes of dodging motorbikes and wading through sandy coloured water we arrive on dryish land and jump into a waiting taxi for the 20 minute drive to long beach at a cost 180,000d.

We arrive at our home for the night the Beach Club Resort (Thanks H&P for your recommendation) and it’s a stunning little place and a bungalow costs $25 US per night but due to a rule that you can only book if you fly to the island we could only stay one night as it was fully booked from then on. Due to storm still knocking around we kick back and drink some wine and don’t really do a great deal else.

We get up early and explore the beach, our prime aim to find another home which we do in a guesthouse called Viet Thanh Resort this was a cool little gaff, a beach based bungalow with a balcony with two hammocks …that’s right TWO HAMMOCKS!!!!! None of this sharing malarkey we have one each. The bungalow was basic but it cost $10 US per night and it was on the beach, no shoes were worn the entire time we were there. Phu Quoc is more expensive than the rest of Vietnam, for the same money you get a lot more on the mainland but it is beautiful.

It finally stopped raining after 2 days it was sunny and hot so we spent the rest of our time kicking back on the beach. We also hired a motorbike for 150,000d for the day, the place were we hired the bike from was down a rocky bumpy road which T with his zero driving skill navigated like a professional nearly falling off once or twice whilst the bike powered away from him, we must add, this bike was a 125 cc and weighed a ton, T found it difficult to hold it up, certainly was nothing like the 50cc bikes in other parts of the world, but T manages to get it to the main road. Now it was G’s attempt to demonstrate to the bike dude she can handle the beast, so off she drives down the gravel roads and then makes an attempt to turn around to come back to us but the back wheel skids on the gravel and she stacks it, the girls from the local shop pick her up and the bike dude and T dart to G. She has a nasty gash on her knee and her ankle was also cut and swollen, a bit shaken G limps back to the hammock - so our exploring of the island got us within 500m of our gaff!!!! The day was spent kicking back on the beach and in the hammocks.

The next morning we get an early morning ferry back to Ha Tien to arrange our Cambodian visas and our bus to Cambodia oh and to wait another hour for food this time omelette and bread!!!!!

Phu Quoc is not part of the Mekong region and is closer to the coast of Cambodia than Vietnam and is famous for its nuoc mam which is fish sauce incidentally you can visit the nuoc mam factory and see the vast vats however, the stench of horrible fermenting fish sauce was not something we were overly keen on seeing so we didn’t bother. Another thing Phu Quoc is famous for is its black pepper which we had plenty of on all our meals.

We loved Vietnam and wish we had time to spend 6 weeks here so we could have done all the stuff we didn’t have time to do like Sapa and the Easy Riders, yes G is still up for sitting on the back of bikes just not in the driving seat!!!!

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