Phu Quoc Island

After our little Cambodian visa fiasco, Eric and I decided to do something that most American tourists in Vietnam don’t do… go to Phu Quoc island.  Just the name Phu Quoc makes you take a deep breath and sigh… 

Just imagine.  Currently, I am sitting outside of our very own one room bungalow that sits directly on the beach.  We have a giant bed with a mosquito net surrounding the entire mattress.  (It’s like Scrooge’s bed in the movie a Christmas Carol!)   Our lullaby at night is the sound of the waves crashing against the sand.  Incredible, right?  We’re staying at a place called the Tropicana on Long Beach.  It’s truly breathtaking.

Our first night here we took a swim and then walked to the Town Centre which is about 1.5 km away.  We had some absolutely delicious spiked banana and pineapple smoothies and milkshakes.  Then we went to the night market which is really a fish market.  There were multiple stands of giant blue lobsters, red snappers, sharks, all kinds of shrimp, crabs, and clams!  And they were all so fresh, probably pulled right out of the ocean that day. 

We picked out a HUGE Tiger Shrimp which they grilled in garlic…. Let me emphasize that we had A shrimp for dinner… THAT’s how big it was.  In addition, we picked out two pretty big squids which were grilled and served with the island’s famous salt, pepper, and lime sauce.  With a side of roasted veggies, it was an awesome island-style meal! 

We enjoyed a nice stroll along the market and on our way home we saw a cute restaurant alongside the road called Chez Carole.  It looked like a Filipino band would be playing soon and I thought we needed some good ol’ dancing to end the night.  So we stayed there for about an hour or two and cut a rug on the dance floor! A great way to finish a flawless day!

Now we were certainly enjoying the serene ocean setting, waking up early in the morning for a swim and spending the evening sitting alongside the water digging our toes in the sand.  BUT… you know the curiosity in us never ends!

I told you that we would be renting a motorbike, right?  Well, on our second day on the island, we rented a motorbike and after that incident in Saigon, Eric has definitely redeemed himself as a highly capable driver!  We rode all the way down to the southern tip of the island to a beach called Bai Sao (Sao Beach).  That’s about 25 km from the Tropicana.  Now this should normally take an hour (if you’re going as slow as we go), but the roads down here are either horrendous or under construction… meaning they are dirt roads.  And there are no signs to direct us to Bai Sao.  AND we’re here during their rainy season so it POURS at least once a day.

So…  given all of that it took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to reach Bai Sao.  But let me tell you… it was worth it!  We had so much fun getting lost,  switching directions, and running into dead ends. We managed to just barely miss getting drenched in a rainstorm by ducking into a small “restaurant” along the road.  Eric was a good driver too!  Honestly!  I was certainly worried about this…I’m not going to deny that, but he was very even-keeled and cautious, even when the giant dump trucks would want to pass us and were basically shoving us off the road, he played it safe.  I was super proud of him and I loved seeing such untouched land throughout our journey.  The island truly is beautiful, but it’s also a little strange.

The airport is very modern and pretty large considering only five flights fly in and out of the island per day.  And yet, the road infrastructure is horrendous even to get from one beautiful beach (Long Beach) to another (Bai Sao) or to the pier for fresh crabs (Ham Nimh).  At least half of the way to each destination is dirt or rock roads! 

Then when we reached Bai Sao, the white sand and clear turquoise waters were slightly overshadowed by the garbage that we would find laying around.  If Vietnam truly wants Phu Quoc to live up to its claim that it’s one of the most beautiful beaches in Asia then it at least needs to put a stronger focus on garbage cleanup along the beaches.  Now granted, not all areas were like this.  In fact, our hotel at the Tropicana had its own cleaning crew, and we found a beautiful area at Bai Sao that had very little garbage so it was still very picturesque. 

Anyway enough of that rant.  Our lunch on the beach was awesome!  Grilled shrimp with some really yummy sauces and a traditional southern Vietnamese fish soup with okra, onions, and pineapple really satisfied us after such a long journey.  It was easily enough food to feed a family of five, but we did a pretty good job of scarfing it down. 

We stayed at Bai Sao for around three and half hours, and really enjoyed exploring the beach, swimming, and watching a fisherman reel in his seine.  We got so close that we could pretty much touch the fish that he had pulled up in the net.  I’ve never seen so many fish at once! 

Our bike ride home was much quicker than our ride into Sao Beach, exactly an hour.  We made it home just in time to watch the sunset on the beach. 

That night we planned to go back to the town for dinner, but a massive storm came ashore and we were pretty much trapped inside of our bungalow for the night. I felt a bit like a kid camping in a little hut.  We turned off all of the lights so it was pitch black and sat inside the mosquito net and just chatted for hours while listening to the thunderous rain and watching the lightening reflect off the water.  Our dinner that night consisted of blueberry crisp and oatmeal raisin Cliff Bars, a tad bit different from our island feasts we’d been having the past couple days, huh?

Our last day in Phu Quoc was spent swimming in the ocean and the pool for a bit and then watching a storm from a restaurant sitting directly on the beach while having banana juice, spring rolls, and freshly cut pineapple from a woman walking along the beach.

Phu Quoc was such a wonderful adventure!  From the freedom of riding our own motorbike across the island to picking out our own seafood to jumping around in the Gulf of Thailand; it was all amazing!  I really appreciated the slower pace of life at Phu Quoc.  Now back to the city amongst the millions of motorbikes and street vendors!