Advertisement
Published: April 29th 2014
Edit Blog Post
I'm off to the islands!!!
YEAAAAA! For me this trip means a ton, it's been almost 2 years next month since I've been to any beach and at the same time I needed a breather from teaching! I recently started with a private school in the Long An region on April 15th so in order to get my full pay for April I've been busting my ass 75 teaching hours in 13 days before the holiday. I really like my new school and looking forward to working here all year until my contract ends mid January about a week before my birthday.
Getting on with this blog, I know it's been a while, but I've been so busy working I haven't been able to get out anywhere....It was originally a choice between Mui Ne or Phu Quoc island..I chose Phu Quoc because it's off the mainland and the beach looks to be the best in all of Vietnam. Pretty cheap 2 day vacation considering beachfront accommodation and round trip airline tickets from Ho Chi Minh. It's a stones throw from the coast of Cambodia, but you can only enter via Vietnam. I wanted to get
here before the tourism picks up and it's flooded with 20 somethings trashing it and the big hotels dominate the skyline. Now it's still a quaint little island with tourism on the rise where the economy is basically dominated as you would imagine on the sea and farming with beautiful beaches all around, I picked a guesthouse called "My Lan" and it's located on the southeastern side which is far and isolated from the party scene of the main square. I just wanted to relax, eat as much seafood as my belly can take and take in some sun and swimming. I am also thinking of doing a snorkeling trip to the southern islands just for half a day. I will go back I'm sure when I have more time to see the pepper farms and the big fish sauce factory as well as coconut tree prison which has a ton of history attached to it, but for now it's just sun and fun.
The trip didn't start well, as Jetstar was delayed 3 hours and 30 minutes from the original departure time. I arrived at the Ho Chi Minh airport at around 10am my flight was
at 12:30pm...Now 4pm....to say the least I was very disappointed with that, the gave me a free food voucher for the restaurant upstairs and also gave me 150,000 dong off my next flight which is about $7 lol..Needless to say I won't be flying them anymore as Ii was looking at all the other flights all Jetstar was delayed and going to the same cities vietnam airlines and VietJet were normal.
Finally at 4:20 we lifted off and the flight was a smooth 30 minute flight. A tip for anyone coming here I was approached outside the Phu Quoc airport by a motorbike driver and a taxi company I asked about the prices to get to Bai Sao beach which is pretty far and the taxi cost was 320,000 dong and the motorbike 120,000 about a $10 difference..Motorbike it was! Not that bad of a ride considering all the dirt roads and construction going on. I arrived at my hotel (My Lan) just in time for the sunset ( I'm on the east side of the island so no ACTUAL sunset, but still very beautiful) I had some beers and watched the fishing boats line up on
the horizon for their nightly catches.
The next morning I was up bright and early around 6am to try to get a nice sunset, but to no avail as it thunder stormed all night and was very cloudy in the morning, but I enjoyed my nice free breakfast, a cafe and cheese omelet with a medium baguette on the beach. I had bought some of what they consider sunblock here called "sunplay" umm yea must be china made because it didn't work at all and for the only 2nd time ever ..I burned lol, Cancun being the first time. It was a great day at the beach, cloudy most of the day, but the sun shone brightly in the afternoon it was a great day of swimming and pictures as I haven't been to the beach in 2 years this month as I mentioned before. My last night I gathered together a seafood feast as you see and some nice drinks to celebrate. I won't be having much time to travel at all this year because Vietnam doesn't have many holidays throughout the year except for TET and I'm working 6 days per week. I concluded my
stay on Phu Quoc on Wednesday with swimming in the morning and breakfast and more swimming!
Hope you enjoy the pics!
Greg
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0347s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Quiet time!
Greg that sounds like a fantastic two day getaway. There aren't that many low key beach destinations left, so thanks for the tip :)