Phu Quoc Island
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2007
1
72
82
Trip End
Dec 12, 2008
Where I stayed
Lam Ha Eco Resort
Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam
Friday, November 21, 2008
Our first morning on Phy Quoc island was a blissfully lazy one, drinking coffee and eating breakfast on sun loungers on the beach, swimming in the sea and reading our books. In the late morning we decided to rent motorbikes for the day to see some more of the island. The roads were just dirt tracks but they were in better condition than I had expected. It felt great to have the freedom to explore the island independently, and we both really enjoyed ourselves. There aren't many tourists on Phu Quoc at the moment, but even so it was nice to drive through areas where we were the only Westerners. At one point we stopped at a beachside cafe where a bunch of Vietnamese teenagers were having a birthday party which was fun to watch. After that we drove along a beautiful open road with a wide stretch of grass to our right hand side and miles of completely deserted beaches just on the other side of that, so we enjoyed a swim and sunbathe before heading back to Long Beach.
The next day we went on a snorkelling trip. There were quite a lot of people on the tour which worried us at first, but it was a big boat so the large group size didn't really matter. The snorkelling was good but cloudier than some places I've been to, perhaps due to recent bad weather. Later in the day it started to cloud over and get quite cold, so I skipped a couple of the snorkelling stops, opting instead to stay on my deck chair wrapped in a sarong, drinking the free 'Chanh Rhum' and chatting to other people with the same idea. We stopped to go fishing for a while, and I caught my first ever fish. I felt bad killing something but actually it died very quickly, contrary to my expectations - I'd rather eat that than something that spent its whole life in a farm. The trip ended with a stop on a nice beach and then an obligatory commission-based trip to a 'pearl factory', which was just a tacky jewellery shop with nothing factory-esque about it.
On our final morning in Phu Quoc we had another lovely long, lazy breakfast followed by massages and manicures on the beach from our friend 'Madam Oi' who has been following us round since we got here.
We then left for the airport, having decided that the convenience of a short flight to Saigon far outweighed the $10 we would save by taking the boat back to Rach Gia and then an overnight bus to Saigon. I am aware, however, that my eagerness to book a flight for the sake of convenience makes me a bit of a hypocrite, because as I wrote this entry the thought always in the back of my mind was of sadness that already this island is just beginning its transformation from an idyllic getaway into a Western tourist resort (read: Thai island). Many parts of the island are just huge building sites making way for new resorts, and construction on the new international airport began the day we left.
