C & C globetrotting around the world…

After 4 months of travelling, we needed a vacation. Although we weren’t at work, constantly packing, unpacking and taking trains and buses gets tiring after a while. So we decided to take a little vacation on Phu Quoc Island in southern Vietnam to relax and enjoy some beach days. Phu Quoc Island in the Gulf of Thailand is a little piece of paradise that hasn’t been developed too much, yet. They are building an international airport and 5-star resorts are supposed to mushroom in the next few years, but for now the island relies mainly on fishing (70% of the population are fishermen). There is also a fish sauce factory, a pepper farm and a pearl farm. It’s interesting that they want to develop the tourism industry so much, but don’t even have enough power. The island is not connected to the mainland power grid, so they use coal generators for power. This causes power shortages with electricity being shut off during the day.

We arrived by plane, flying over Saigon and lots of flooded land on the way. Only the fields seemed flooded, not the roads and houses, so we think it’s maybe controlled. On Phu Quoc we hadn’t booked anything since we wanted to see the place beforehand. The first night we stayed in an ocean-view room close to Duong Dong town, left our luggage there and went to explore the beach resorts. One resort had rooms and bungalows at acceptable prices, so we asked to see them. The guy at the reception walked us through the resort and showed us a bungalow, pointing that it was it. When we asked to look inside, he said no. Way to show us a room! We continued a bit more and finally found a nice place with good Tripadvisor reviews and at a good price: $10 a night. On the way back we walked on the beach, which is beautifully lined with coconut palms. There are people on the beach, but it’s not crowded at all and in the evening the restaurants offer BBQ dinners on the beach. We walked home with our feet in the water watching the sunset, which was really nice after a hot day.

We hadn’t decided on how many days to stay on Phu Quoc, but ended up staying a week. Vacation feels good! We did the typical beach vacation activities: sunbathing, swimming, chilling in the shade when the sun was too hot, reading and walking on the beach. Watching the sunset was always a great part and having wine and cheese on the beach in the evening while planning the next few weeks in Cambodia and Laos was fun. One evening we also walked along the beach into town to the Night Market, a street with lots of food stalls and a few souvenir stands.

One day we took a tour to the An Thoi archipelago in the South of the island. On the bus ride to the harbour, we stopped at the Pearl Farm where a lady explained us the process of farming the pearls and showed us the harvesting before we could look around in the pearl jewely shop. Unfortunately it’s not in our budget, but there were definitely some nice pieces. We then boarded the boat and off we went to tour the islets. We passed colourful fisher boats and stopped to fish ourselves. We caught 2 small fish and were happy about it. At a spot of crystal clear waters, the boat stopped for us to go snorkeling or just drifting around. On board we had a seafood lunch and a platter of fresh fruit. Some also tried boiled sea urchin for a little extra, but we didn’t venture that far. We also stopped at a picture perfect island, where we swam some more and chilled on the white sand beach under the coconut palms. Back on Phu Quoc island, we went to Sao Beach, a more secluded beautiful beach before heading back to our resort for sunset. For dinner we had BBQ fish dinner on the beach, the perfect end to this wonderful day.

Overall, Phu Quoc was amazing. We relaxed, sunbathed, swam, planned and had delicious fresh fruits every day, as well as great seafood BBQ. What more can one ask for? We hope development doesn’t come as early as planned and this little gem continues its slow-moving lifestyle for a while…