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Gaaaah!
Pork and noodles. Dream meal. After two long months of being apart, Guillaume and I had been planning a wonderful getaway to the southern island of Phu Quoc. We thought it would be the perfect setting for us to catch up and spend some much needed time together.
Being quite popular with resort style tourism, and us being quite non-resort style tourists, we managed to find ourselves a small, brand new family run guesthouse. We got ourselves a really comfortable, clean room for a steal of a deal. The location was great too, a mere 5 minute walk from the beach and a 5 minute motorbike ride to the town. We were sure that our 10 days there would be relaxing and smooth.
On our first day in Phu Quoc we rented a motorbike to drive around and explore the island and all of the small beaches around it. There aren’t too many roads on the island, so it was easy to get around. Though they are mostly unpaved therefore the amount of red dust blowing around is almost certain to give your clothes a dusty rose hue.
The first beach we got to, Bai Sao, was quite beautiful, but for a very strange reason indeed,
Gaaaah!
Pork and noodles lady. there were hundreds of thousands of small, golfball sized, jellyfish being washed ashore. They were in the water and all over the beach. And wouldn’t you know, that didn’t stop us from going for a little swim. It was a bizarre feeling but refreshing nonetheless.
For lunch we found ourselves a beachside seafood joint, serving up fresh food with a great view. We ordered a large plate of BBQ squid, wanting to really get in the swing of being on vacation on a tropical island, and feasted. The rest of the day went well; motorbike, beach, motorbike, coconut juice, motorbike, sunset. When we got back to guesthouse Guillaume finally admitted to me that he wasn’t feeling so great. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is “Ok, what did we eat today?”. Since I was feeling alright we didn’t jump to conclusions that it was a case of bad food. But as the night progressed, Guillaume felt worse and worse and soon his body was expelling (in every sort of way) that squid from his body as fast as it could. It was a rough night, long enough for us to finally realize that Guillaume must be allergic to
squid, to have produced a reaction like he did.
The next few days were really just recuperation days. His body was trying to repair itself from being utterly wiped out. Guillaume wasn’t eating much for about four days, therefore he didn’t have very much energy, therefore it was a lazy few days for me. One thing that he COULD manage to do was drink coconut water…fiercely. He would drink two, three, even four coconuts in a day. Firmly believing, all the while, that it was his sure fire road to recovery.
Five days later, halfway into our “honeymoon”, when Guillaume gained back his energy, we decided to have another day exploring the island on motorbike. So, we set off in the morning, hoping to see some more great beaches and get some sun. One hour into the drive we were passing through a small village, soon to realize that we had taken a wrong road. Guillaume was setting up to make U-turn to turn back the way we came. He looked back, I looked back, the road was clear, he started to drive and what do you know…two brain-dead teenagers come blazing out of NOWHERE from behind us and tried
to drive around us..IN THE DIRECTION WHERE WE ARE CLEARLY DRIVING.
So, crash, bang, boom. The four of us are in a heap of man and motorbike, in the middle of the road. We climb up from the wreck, survey the scene and we instantly know our role, as “rich” white tourists. Once we see that the teenagers are fine, we need to pay them so appease the ever-growing angry mob getting larger by second and get the heck out of there. PRONTO.
It was such a crazy scene, with the adrenaline rushing and having the large crowd shouting at us in Vietnamese, that we didn’t even notice, until we were about 20 minutes down the highway, that Guillaume had actually hurt himself quite badly. His leg had been pinned on top of their exhaust pipe and a large patch of his skin had burnt off and left a sickening white spot where the skin had been.
We got back to our guesthouse and tried to figure out what to do. Was it serious enough to go to the hospital? Could I put on my nurse’ cap and get a handle on this myself? I had some cream for burns
and smeared it all over him. Only to find out minutes later, after a quick google research, that you shouldn’t put ANYTHING on a white burn and to go to the hospital immediately. Doh.
So, back on the motorbike and off to the hospital. It didn’t take long to see someone who we weren’t sure was a doctor (when I asked if she was a doctor or a nurse she replied “sort of”). Errrr…
She bandaged him up, in a half-assed manner, prescribed him some anti-biotics and shooed us out of there. I can’t say that we were feeling confident about this treatment.
In the evening we went for a second opinion, a small clinic run out of the doctors house, recommended as the best doctor on the island by a European expat we met. Again, scary situation. While we waiting our turn we witnessed the doctor roaming from patient to patient. Giving needle injections, IV drips, taking payments, taking peoples temperatures…doing all of this without washing his hands between patients. Scary, to say the least. When it came to Guillaume, the doctor knew what to do, but after grabbing a cotton swab with his filthy hands, rolling it around
Staring at my chops
Those dogs were so cute but so not gettin my lunch. for a while and attempted to brush it across Guillaume’s giant open wound, Guillaume pleaded with him to PLEASE take a new one, without touching it. The doctor complied, did his job and we got the heck out of that place without looking back.
The rest of our time spent in Phu Quoc consisted of taking care of Guillaumes wound, corresponding with our amazing friend Marie-Claude (who was standing in as our virtual-nurse, THANK YOU!!), drinking as many coconuts as humanly possible, hanging out on the beach (though no swimming for Guillaume) and just plain ol’ relaxing.
On our last night on the island, the owners from our FANTASTIC guesthouse wanted to celebrate that we were the first customers to make a reservation on their new website, so they hosted a BBQ for us with their family. It was a nice time, lots of fresh fish, beers, laughter and babies (so many babies in Vietnam!).
Not quite the ‘honeymoon’ that we were expecting on Phu Quoc island, but lucky for us, we usually do well with the unexpected.
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