October 4-9: Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam

We arranged for our hotel, Thanh Kieu Resort, to pick us up at Phu Quoc’s small airport, and they showed up on time, with our name on a sign. The driver dropped us at the hotel reception, but it was deserted; no one was working the desk. We waited a while, and finally asked the driver where everyone was. I suppose he didn’t speak any English because he just motioned us back towards the front desk. We waited a bit more and at last someone arrived to check us in. We had reserved a beach front bungalow (sounds really fancy, but it was like $2 more per night than the other rooms), and we were shown our room. It was hardly beachfront. We were on the frontline of bungalows, but we could not see the ocean because we were far away, there were many palm trees, and there was CONSTRUCTION going on just in front of the bungalow. The receptionist lady asked, “Is no problem for you,” and it sounded more like a command. It was also very warm and buggy, with no air conditioning in the room. We asked if there was anything else, and she said no. Well, it would have been nice to know when we called ahead to book the room that there was construction! I guess she saw our discontentment, and magically another room, slightly farther from the construction, became available. Although it still was not exactly as we had envisioned, we took it.

After travelling all morning, we were a bit hungry, so we went out to find the hotel’s restaurant. Non-operational. We decided to walk down the beach to find another place to eat at, and saw that our hotel had the WORST loungers. They were hard, with no pads, and were sticky from being freshly painted. There were also no umbrellas. Jeff and I don’t have high standards, but when a place markets itself at a beach resort, one expects certain amenities. We continued on down the beach, asking at every hotel how much their rooms were. We found one place, Lien Hiep Thanh, on the same beach with cheaper rooms which were much more beach front. And they had air conditioning! And an awesome-looking restaurant! With loungers with pads and umbrellas! Lovely. We reserved a room for the following night. We trudged back to our place and tried to lay on the uncomfortable loungers for a while, but it began to rain anyway, so we ran back to our bungalow to mope.

It rained the majority of the time for a couple days, which was a huge bummer since we only had four days on the island. But once it lifted, Jeff and I had a fabulous time relaxing on the beach. There is a breed of wild dog on the island who have little Mohawks along their backs. They were very cute and sweet, and a few played on our hotel’s beach every day.

We decided to try night squid fishing because it sounded pretty fun and unique. We went through a tour company who was renowned for their spectacular English. But can you believe it, our guide didn’t get on the boat with us because he said he had a bad hangover, and the two guys on the boat couldn’t speak any English. Everything was fine for a while, as Jeff and I enjoyed the lovely sunset, but once it came time to fish for the squid, we had no idea what to do, and the crew were not able to explain it to us. We tried to imitate them, but we could not catch one single squid between the two of us. The crew caught a few, and one of them even shot its ink all over the deck! It also didn’t help that I was feeling very seasick. They fixed us up a seafood dinner, but I wasn’t able to eat mine until once we were back in the harbor. Overall, we had much higher expectations than what actually happened.

The next day, we joined a snorkeling tour with an Australian couple. The tour stopped by a pearl farm, and then took us out on the boat to a couple of Phu Quoc’s best snorkeling spots. There were definitely lots of fish and coral, but not the brightly colored kind one sees in Hawaii. It was still a very fun time, though; much more of a success than the night squid fishing! That night we headed down the night market for dinner. There were countless restaurant stalls preparing all kinds of fresh seafood: red snapper, clams, so many kinds of sea snails, crabs, sea urchins, scallops… We ate at a place whose owner learned English in Australia, so it was very interesting to listen to his accent. Everything was soooo delicious! We got a sampler of everything he had and it only cost us like six dollars each.

The next night we ate at our hotel (a similar kind of seafood selection) and met two couples from Sacramento. They were super nice and invited us over to their table. They had met a British couple earlier that day, and they met up with us too. We talked and had drinks until pretty late, and made plans to meet up again the following day. The Sacramento couples decided to rent motorbikes/Vespa type scooters to cruise around the island, but I was a little too scared to join them, because of horror stories I had heard of motorbike accidents. Instead, Jeff and I lazed around the beach, relaxing and reading. We ran into them later that afternoon, and one of the women had gotten into an accident on her bike! Although it was nothing too serious, she still messed up her ankle and I was happy I had decided not to go. Jeff and I, the two Sacramento couples, and the British couple, went back to the night market for dinner that night and had a lovely time. We even ran into the Australian couple from our snorkeling trip! Jeff and I had to leave the next morning to go meet his parents in Saigon, so we said our goodbyes to everyone, and headed back to the hotel to pack up our things so we’d be ready to leave bright and early the following day.


Huge catch


Squid fishing...we had no luck but our guide did