Phu Quoc

Vietnam’s equivalent of Thailand… lets hope not!! A couple of hours ferry ride from the Vietnam coast and about 15 minutes from the Cambodian mainland is the island of Phu Quoc, a small island with plenty to explore. But first things first, let’s find somewhere to stay, a nice picture postcard little hut by the beach where the sea laps the doorstep… ok those are out of our buget ($30 a night, still cheap, but we need cheaper!) instead we settle for something a third of the price and about 4 minutes walk to the sea, who wants to be woken up by the sound of waves anyway! The island so far has managed to stay fairly undeveloped but it will only be a matter of time before big hotels and fancy resorts (of which there are only a few at the moment!) line the beach for as far as you can see. But at the moment its all very chilled and quiet. We hired mopeds to explore the island for 2 days. The first day we headed north, only 30km to the tip of the island but this took about 2 hours on very pot-holey gravel roads. Rode through some cool little old villages, over some very dilapidated bridges, where the wooden runners looked like they were about to collapse, and out along some stunning coastal scenery – riding on red dirt track roads with white sand and the blue sea about 10 foot to one side of you is a cool way to ride bikes. We stopped on route to take a cooling dip in the warm sea waters, before running quickly out after about 15 jellyfish stings. Arrived back in town in time for a sunset dip, again cut short because of jellyfish! On the 2nd day we headed south, down to the other main resort area of the island and its nice little cove, this time without jellyfish, although I did go swimming with all our money in my pocket – whoops!! It’s a stunning little island which is good for a couple of days exploring, but neither of us being the ‘lets sit on the beach all day’ kinda of people it was only ever going to be a brief visit, so after another evening of watching the sun go down with a beer and chilling out we left the following morning by plane back to HCMC to meet our friends Matt and Adele who were arriving from England that evening.