Advertisement
Published: January 18th 2011
Edit Blog Post
An "Outdoor" abultion experience
The hot water was questionable and the view was quite open We made our way out to HCMC airport for the 1 hour flight to Phu Quoc, a small island west of Vietnam mainland, in the Gulf of Thailand... It is actually only about 11km from the Cambodian border and more than 70 kms from any part of mainland Vietnam, but the island is definately Vietnamese (also has a strong military presence to disuade Cambodia from asserting it's theoretical claim on the territory)
The island is about the same size a Singapore, very much under-developed from a tourism perspective at this stage, although that is rapidly changing with the cogs of tourist infrastructure now being seen everywhere. There are many small beach resorts dotted down the western coast in a 2 km stretch down from the small but bustling capital of Duong Dong. Most of the tourists go to Phu Quoc to sunbathe, rest, swim in the beautiful crystal clear sea and drink cocktails at the resort bars and restaurants. Of course this is the ideal way for Chris to spend a holiday, for about half an hour! We had to get mobile and get out to see what treasures this island could share.
So we duly rented a Suzuki
A Road less travelled
Suzi went where no scooter should ever go automatic 125 scooter for 3 days at the going rate of 100000 Dong ($5) a day. Just a bit about the Dong, much mirth and schoolboy humour has been directed at the Dong... "Hey lady, wanna see my Dong?" or as my mate Guyza famously sang in Karaoke in Halong Bay, "Killing me softly with his Dong". But any currency that lets you withdraw 2 million from an ATM and then gives you a receipt saying you have 164 million available is pretty cool in my opinion.
We left the relative civilisation of Duong Dong and headed south. Soon we discovered that the beautiful sealed road became a track of red dirt, dust, sand and occasionally not much track at all. The rest of island at present is relatively untouched by tourism apart from a few foriegners like ourselves taking their scooters to places no scooters should ever see. Small fishing villages with the locals doing their fishing on the beach with massive nets with rudimentary hauling in devices, or pretty but very sea-worn blue boats scattered all out to sea. Millions of fish being sun dried alongside the road for kilometres gave a very strong piscatorial aroma as
you rode past. Stopping at a "shop" at a village for a beer would mean a jug of ice with a can of hot beer plonked in the middle of it. This is the refrigeration of the villages outside the resort strip. Sometimes the beer would be poured overthe ice, the trick is to drink it pretty damn quick as the the alcohol content is being rapidly diluted before your eyes and tastebuds!
The best fun (read also: most terrifying) was the stretch of the stretch of "road" of the north east of the island, about 10kms of one lane track where there were many bridges made of 50 cm twigs nailed side by side to pass over streams, ravines and other inaccessable areas (by anyone elses standards), but somehow we got the poor little Suzi across them, although came a cropper at the end of one in the sandy surface, bouncing poor Keiko clean off the bike. Nothing more than a few scratches and bruises for us both, we mounted our faithful steed again to take on the next "bridge" 200 metres up the track.
The whole north of the island is having a 4 lane highway
constructed, for about 25 kms. It is one big construction zone, no lollipop men or traffic signals here though, you might have 2 options, take the left lane which looks totally impassable with the bulldozers and steamrollers doing their thing, or the right lane which looks worse... so its the left then. The totally inaccessable areas you may see a detour sign (read: a cut down tree branch) to guide you to the correct direction.
To circumnavigate the 70 or so kms took us about 6 hours with a couple of beer stops. The road back into Duong Dong was a newly sealed 4 lane highway so it was so refreshing to open up the throttle a bit for the last 5 km.
One night we took the sunset cruise/ squid fishing boat out from the harbour. We stopped at a floating village to buy the seafood for the dinner on board. The squid fishing was fun, but the little basatrds get hooked and you bring them up and as soon as they get to the surface they spit the jig out... the hooks have no barbs so i cant see how on earth you can actually get them
into the boat. One of the crew caught one, and the few were bought at the floating village were cooked alive as part of the meal as well as fish still live... so it was as fresh as it could most probably be. But although the seafood was nice, the squid were spitting their way off the hook, and in typical Vietnamese style the captain got us back to the harbour at 8.30pm... when our tour statedwe would be back at 10pm. Anyway, there was no more beer on board, the food was eaten and the squid fishing was crap so wewere not complaining.
Phu Quoc is famous for it's seafood of course and it is as fresh as it can be (see above). One night we went to the seafood market at the harbour for dinner and experienced the best marinated mackeral steaks I have ever tasted, at a seafood BBQ place called "CAT FOOD"... I'm sure no moggie, however pampered would deserve such delicacies served up there (I hope the name of the place was not referring to an ingredient in their recipes).
Phu Quoc was an amazing place, think Ko Samui divided by100 times in
infrastructure but multiplied a thousand times in charm and hospitality. It is a shame that we have probably witnessed the last of it's "un-spoiltness"as we saw the inevitable shadow of global tourism in the roads and western resort construction everywhere. In 5 years it will be indestinguishable as the place it now is, which is sad and the exploitation will be complete
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0407s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb