Phu Quoc

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GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!

Not that i have ever seen the movie that made it famous but Jimmy loves it seen as it has his favourite actor Robin Williams in it so i felt obliged to start our Vietnam tour with it.

We left Cambodia and traveled along the south coast into Vietnam through a new border crossing that had only just opened up which turned out OK as it was the easiest border crossing i ever went through, there was only our coach and one lonely monk going through so no sweating in queues for hours on end. We made the short trip to the harbour where we had to catch our boat from and after somehow surviving a minor scare of falling off the wooden plank that passed for a walkway onto the boat we were on our way to the island of Phu Quoc.

Phu Quoc if you look it up on the map is actually only about five KM from Sihanoukville and probably should be a Cambodian territory but at some point in history the Vietnamese decided they wanted it so promptly went and took it. The lonely planet book described it as the place "to take a holiday from your holiday" and that pretty much sums the place it up.

We got a minibus that dropped us off along the main beach, despite our protests that we wanted to stay in the town centre and not on the beach front our driver dropped us off at a little beach resort which we stayed at for a night before moving. It is really nice to wake up and just stroll down to the beach, but its probably nicer to walk the extra five minutes and have air con, tv and a fridge full of beer.

Phu Quoc totally blew my mind when we got there, it was like nothing i had experience so far on our travels and nothing i have seen since, pretty much all the locals only speak Vietnamese and we were actually quite a novelty being in town, we would walk down the street and have children running up to us excitedly "Hello", "What is your name?" "Where do you come from?". Everywhere you went people were smiling, the place is such an idyllic paradise it is beyond comprehension that so few people make this a stop on their travels. The beach is really nice and totally deserted, quite often i would go down in the afternoon and see not a single other person on it. Lazing under a palm tree reading a book had never been quite as enjoyable as it was here.

I think over the next few years this place is going to become a hugely popular destination for holidaying, both local and international, some of the resorts on the beach front were stunning and there seemed to be weddings on the beach quite a lot so maybe it is going to go down the high class holidays route.

The island is quite big and Jimmy got his bike out to go exploring around, he said when you got to the very northern tip of the island you could actually see the Cambodian beaches it is that close. I spent a lot of my time either getting a tan or wandering around the local village.

Basically Phu Quoc is built around the huge harbour in the town centre which comes alive at night as the squid fishing vessels head out into the open water, when you cross over from the tourist side of town across the bridge it is like a different world, the local market was crazy and the sights, smells and sounds sent my senses into overdrive, i spent the whole time grinning from ear to ear i think, everyone was so friendly and happy and after looking around the shanty towns that they lived in this was great to see.

I found a local coffee shop i liked and would often spend an hour sitting there watching the world go by, the locals all wanting to talk with us as best as they could, everyone was so friendly and they had a good laugh at the fact that both me and Cuffley are cack handed and that in Vietnam makes you as strange as Danny Lambert at a weight watchers class or the elephant man in a beauty pageant.

Every evening just before the sun would start to go down the locals would all head out into the streets and start playing games, i had a game of football with some locals and my crazy legs tactic in goal seemed to keep the score low for my team, the game of choice though is where they use what looks like a long tailed shuttlecock and they play keep ups with it, i had to give this a go and found some youths playing on a little dirt track so had a go, i was not to bad for my first time and even managed to pull off a few little show boat tricks much to their appreciation.

The nightlife in Phu Quoc is virtually not existent which was good to properly relax, we did spend one evening sat in the street drinking with the owner of our guest house and his friends, taking it in turns to neck a glass of beer can quickly go to your head. Other then that we found one English bar and an Aussie bar which were cool places to hang out with pool tables, if you go its either Oasis or Dog Bar for a night time drink.

Apparently in the next few years the local airport is being turned into an international gateway for the world so i completely expect this place to blow up as it really is so picture perfect i can't speak highly enough of it and i'll steal another quote from the lonely planet book "get here before they pave over paradise."

For us however after a week of relaxation it is time to travel in style, yes we actually shelled out on an airplane to nip us over to our next destination, the southern capital of Vietnam, Saigon...

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