HOLIDAY IN PHU QUOC

HOLIDAY IN PHU QUOC

EPISODE ONE

For us, Phu Quoc has turned out to be just a great place for a holiday. It has many of our favourite ingredients: warm weather, great beaches, cheap seafood, cold beer, comfy beds,…and...errrrr... did I say cold beer?

DRAGONFLY TRAVEL HARD AT WORK

I hear that we are not alone in suffering from a typical problem of the small business owner or the self-employed- we find it have to truly give ourselves some time off from work. Hey, look at me now… working on a blog on my holiday! Anyway we decided that we needed to find somewhere for a short break. Of course this just some of the hard yards that DRAGONFLY TRAVEL put's in to research travel options on your behalf. Heheheh. We were somewhat assisted in our decision-making by the so-called ‘promotion’ by JetStar airlines that promised ridiculously low flights from Hanoi to HCMC. So we took the plunge and grabbed two tickets… only to then see the ‘extra costs’ and the fact that the little boy Thien is now five years old and therefore needed his own fully-paid seat. I tried in vain to argue that he was actually only biologically four years old (Vietnamese people regard your emergence from birth as your first year of life and therefore you are one year old from birth) but they wouldn’t budge – it says five years old according to his papers so… cough up the money for another seat. Anyway the thought of taking Thien on his first ever plane flight far outweighed any misgivings about the eventual price. Both Thu and I had been hankering to visit Phu Quoc island so we booked the connecting flights from HCMC (Saigon) over to the island.

Phu Quoc is Vietnam’s largest island and it lies to the southwest of the country, in the Gulf of Thailand and about 12 kilometres from the coast of Cambodia. It has some interesting history. It was largely unpopulated for many years and then became: a French Missionary post, the base for about 35,000 anti-communist Chinese troops (before they moved on to Taiwan), the home to the largest prison camp in the south during the Vietnam war, and then it was briefly ‘invaded’ by Khmer Rouge troops in 1975. But mostly, it has just ambled along as sleepy collection of fishing villages, pepper and cashew plantations, fish sauce ‘factories’… and guesthouses. In recent years it has been experiencing somewhat of a tourist boom which has surged even further since the opening of a new international airport. These days there are direct flights from Germany and Russia, as well as connecting flights from Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok… as well as my favourite kind of flight (short)… a 35 minute shuttle from HCMC.

It was the first flight on an airplane for our little fellah, Thien. We had bought him his own little

THE EXPERIENCED TRAVELLER

 carry-on bag and he had the neck pillow we bought for $5 in a sale at the National Geographic shop in Tasmania. He soon cottoned on to his new status as "cute-boy on first plane travel" and was flirting unashamedly with ground staff, kiosk servers, total strangers... in fact anyone who caught his eye. When he got in the plane and as we took off he just laughed almost maniacally and looked out the window. He said (in Vietnamese) "Mummy we are up in the sky now and looking down on all the houses!".  Actually, for a first-timer, he was pretty good on the planes and certainly has no fear of flying. But at the airports he was sometimes a bit too quick to try to duck under the security barriers and sneak in through passport control.

The new airport at Phu Quoc is pretty snazzy, almost empty, and still smells of fresh concrete. We were greeted by a smiling driver from our hotel shuttle bus and we stepped out into clear blue skies and scorching 40 degree sunshine. Be aware that Phu Quoc is the place where you need a good hat, decent sunglasses and some strong sunblock lotion. The ride into town only takes about fifteen minutes and you can see that this is definitely tropical island territory, with coconut palms everywhere and the lazy pace of a place that is hot and has respect for the tides and the monsoonal rains. But already, on the new road in from the airport, there are huge, gaudy billboards planted into almost every spare piece of beach frontage land proclaiming that the "Phuc Yeu International Resort Development Company" or suchlike has plans to build a hundred-room luxury resort on the site. Hopefully this is just the normal fanciful boasting that goes on all up and down the Vietnamese coast. One hopes it will amount to nothing or the place will become just another anonymous, half- empty resort strip like around Da Nang and Nha Trang 

A FIVE MINUTE RAINSTOME

We had booked into a small mid-range place about 2 kms from the main town called the Sea Star Resort. It is right on the beach and you can walk along the sand to get into town. It was nice enough - nothing flash- just a sort of comfortable place for a lazy beach holiday. About forty concrete bungalows of various sizes scattered in a fairly well-maintained tropical gardens. BE WARNED however... this place has a reputation for (unofficially) refusing service to Vietnamese people (on the basis that they are not well-behaved guests and are too demanding). The French owners apparently prefer just to leave their rooms empty rather than abandon this racist policy. When Thu tried to book online they said they didn't have any rooms...then I rang them and they miraculously had a room. Actually when we got there we found that they really only had about five bungalows occupied. Phu Quoc has two peak seasons: October to early May which is mainly for foreign tourists, and then a burst of activity during the southern rainy season May to September which is mainly Vietnamese tourists. Most of the Vietnamese travel in largish groups and stay in the cheaper hotels close to town - they are fond of the air conditioning and don’t really like long walks on the beach...or long walks anywhere for that matter. However it is a sign of the immaturity of the tourism sector on the island that some hotels still have this discriminatory attitude towards Vietnamese Tourists. In fact it would be true to say that the island generally is only just beginning to realise the consequences of the new international airport and the direct flights from foreign hubs.

Phu Quoc has really five tourist areas: the little guesthouses, backpackers and small family-run hotels in the main town, Duong Dong; the stretch of medium-priced beach front resorts (of all shapes and sizes and prices) along Long Beach running south from town; a stretch of more remote beachside resorts running north on Ong Lang and Dai Beaches ; and a few white-sand luxury resorts on the eastern side of the island. We opted for long beach which gave us the option of strolling up the beach at sunset, finding a nice little local restaurant and buying fruit and foods in the local markets.

Anyway, we were shown to our room and the look on Thu's face was evident. "Oh", she said "it is a bit disappointing...not like in the photo". That was true enough. The picture on the website must have been taken with one of those magical lenses that real estate agents use and certainly the room was much smaller than the one in the picture. Nevertheless, this was sorted out quickly with the agreement to pay an extra ten dollars a night and then a quick shuffle across the gardens into our new bungalow.

As soon as we could get unpacked we were in our swimming togs and headed down the path

SUNSET ON LONG BEACH

about twenty metres to the beach. To swim in the warm water and then to just float around idly was a great and calm end to the day's activities. Then a quick evening thunderstorm moved in and dropped cool rain on our faces whilst the eye of the storm flashed massive purple lightning strikes over on the coast of Cambodia. It was truly beautiful and the storm was over in five minutes. We padded in our bare sandy feet up the garden path and rinsed under the outdoor shower. Then it was into the bathroom for a quick family rub and scrub to spruce up (island style - clean tee-shirt and shorts all round) before heading up the beach to find dinner. The evening walk was calming and soothing after the madness of Hanoi, and little Thien picked up shells and giggled and kicked back at the gentle waves.... and the sunset was spectacular.

More soon in the next episode...coming soon!

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