Sun Sets & Sea Food – Our Week in Phu Quoc

After being on the road for 3 weeks, we decided to make our final week on holidays a relaxing one. There are plenty of beaches in the area, but we decided on Phu Quoc (pronounced “foo quack”) because of its (relatively) empty beaches and island allure.

About Phu Quoc

Located just south of Cambodia, Phu Quoc is a Vietnamese island in the gulf of Thailand. Famous for its fish oil and pepper exports, Phu Quoc is an up and coming city in South East Asia.

Pepper Fields!!

This is what pepper looks like on the plant

Pepper is one of Phu Quoc’s most important exports

Although the island still has a ways to go to reach Phuket-type status, it’s clear that the Phu Quoc is being developed. One of the main activities to do on the island is to explore by motorcycle. We spent several afternoons cruising around (which is how I got the wicked tan I’m now sporting!!) and we pulled over more than once to check out the resorts that are popping up all over the island.

Resorts under construction on Phu Quoc

These red dirt roads were a bit bumpy, but a beautiful drive

These guys passed us, going WAY too fast on the loose dirt road. We passed them a few minutes later because one of them had lost control of their motorbike and wiped out

Gorgeous palm trees can be found all over the island

We were told by one American man who now calls Phu Quoc home, that 80% of the island’s development has occurred in the last 2 years!! The hotel we stayed at only came up about a month ago, so we were two of the first people to stay in that bungalow!

Mango Resort was a clean and beautiful place to spend the week

The grounds were very well maintained

This was the little bungalow we stayed in

We spent every evening in the pool.

We even had our own private little bench and chairs 🙂

The Vietnamese government aspires to make this tiny island as popular of a tourist spot as Thailand’s Phuket, though I can’t imagine that happening in the near future. Because the island is developing so quickly, the city is haven’t a hard time keeping up with the changes. Garbage is a MASSIVE problem on the island, and more than once, our experiences in Phu Quoc were made less-awesome by the stink of rotting food or the sight of fighting rats. If Vietnam is going to succeed in making this place another Phuket, they need to get a handle on these issues, and quickly!!

Locals and tourists alike leave garbage all over the island

Garbage also comes in from the ocean, and nobody seems to clean it up

Everywhere we went, we saw broken sandals, beer cans, empty water bottles…

Broken glass on the beach…

Lots of broken glass on the beach…

We saw this on our jungle walk, on the way to see some ruins…

I have to admit, there isn’t a tonne to actually DO in Phu Quoc. We spent a day snorkeling, which was alright, but nothing compared to the Caribbean. We visited a park and we did some geo-caching, but as far as activities go, there isn’t a lot set up yet.

A nice park that we visited right before sunset

Dave wanted to stop there to find a Geo-cache inside.

It was a bit busy when we were there, so we had to be pretty sneaky about finding the cache

Dave found the Geo Cache 🙂

Geo Cache #2 was at a war memorial

Weirdly enough we couldn’ t find any information on the memorial other than that it was a war memorial…

We’re thinking it’s probably for the Vietnam War

We found some ‘ruins’ on Dave’s e-map that we decided to check out. The ruins themselves weren’t all that interesting, but the trip there was!!

The drive there was beautiful

We stopped at a little restaurant for drinks and saw that they’d made ‘boats’

Another boat

The biggest coconuts I’ve ever seen

A Peaceful place for a break!

The ruins are located on a small island, so we needed to walk across a pretty rickety looking bridge to get there. In reality, we could have probably just walked across (the water wasn’t deep), but where would the fun be in that?

Those boards weren’t all nailed down

And by boards, I actually mean random pieces of uneven wood…

Dave had a much easier time…I am a clutz (just ask my shins!), so it took me a lot longer!!!

We also had to walk through some jungle to get there. We’d heard some stories about vipers, cobras and scorpions being on the island, so I’m not going to lie…I was a bit of an anxiety case going through that very un-kept trail!!!

We saw some weird plants on our walk

These were the ruins…

The trail

Some more weird plants

This seemed like a nice spot for a selfie 🙂

So, Phu Quoc isn’t the place to go if you like having busy and adventurous holidays. Lucky for us, I do a lot of reading when planning trips and I already knew that. This was actually a perfect destination for us, because all we really wanted from the island were some comfortable beaches, some beautiful sun sets and some fantastic sea food. Phu Quoc offered all 3 of these in big ways.

Beaches

There are several beaches in Phu Quoc, but our favourite was Long Beach. It isn’t as beautiful as the south beach, perhaps, but it was empty, close to our hotel and the prices were reasonable for renting lounge chairs. We spent several afternoons soaking up the rays, swimming in the ocean, and meeting sweet dogs!

I had a couple of massages on the beach. You’d be amazed at the quality of massage you can get here for such little money!!

The beaches were pretty empty, which was definitely a nice bonus!

For 50,000 dong, you could rent a chair and an umbrella all day. That works out to $2.88

There was one dog in particular that I really fell in love with. She had 4 small puppies to take care of, and all of the tourists just loved them to bits. They always had someone to play with, which left their mum time to scrounge for food around the beach (her owners clearly didn’t feed her properly). She was a pretty good thief too! We saw her take off with a couple of sandwiches and at one point, I shooed her away from the massage lady’s bag because she was trying to steal some steamed buns. The sweet massage lady thanked me, looked at the dog, and ended up giving her the buns anyway. Definitely a good person in my books!!

Mama was so timid

This was my favourite of her pups. She was so sweet and cuddly!!

Seafood (and dessert!!)

There was only 1 day the entire week that Dave and I didn’t enjoy seafood with our dinner, and that was the night we went out for Indian food (which was also VERY good!). There is fresh fish, shrimp, crab, lobster and SO much more to eat on the island! If you go to one of the restaurants in Duong Dong, you can get pretty fresh stuff, but the best seafood is found at the night market.

We got to try several new dishes we’d never tried before. My favourite was the sea urchin, but the cuttlefish and eel (a different variety than we’ve had in the past) were also very good! We also enjoyed some fantastic fire garlic snails, shrimp and crab. The options were both endless and delicious!

The cuttlefish was very much like calamari

I had to edit the sea urchin quite a bit so that you could actually see what was inside…in Vietnam they bbq the urchin with peanuts and spring onion. It was so good the first time that I ordered it again!

Dave hated this dish because it took so long to eat, but I loved it. Notice the plate? I guess they stole it from KFC!!! haha!!!

If seafood isn’t your thing, there are plenty of tasty desserts to try as well! We tried this one snack that’s super popular in Vietnam right now. I have no idea what it’s called, but I’ll refer to it as a ‘coconut rice cake thingy’.

First she puts shaved coconut on a rice cake

Next, she adds sweetened condensed milk

Then she takes a piece of sugar and does some weird stuff with it and make sit stringy…I’ll post a video to show you…

Then she tops it with peanuts

Add another rice cake to the top and VOILA!!!

Here’s a video of her working with the sugar…

My absolute favourite dessert of the vacation was a neat sort of ice cream they make on the island. Apparently it’s a Thai dessert, though I never saw it there. First, they put which ever flavours you want onto a big frozen piece of metal (think Marble Slab or Stone Cold Creamery). Then, they add cream.

These guys are set up all along the night market

I chose peanut butter and chocolate. Dave copied me :p

the flavours you can choose.

For $1.73 you can choose from all sorts of fruit and sauces

This is when they get to work…

When they are done you have a delicious ice cream treat to enjoy!

Sunsets

We saw great sunsets most of our nights in Phu Quoc, but I only had my camera for 2 of them. The first was on an empty beach near a mini-fishing village.

Pollution and buildings make it impossible for us to see the sun actually set in China, which is why we were so excited to see the sun go down properly on vacation. We stayed out until it had disappeared below the horizon. It made for some pretty spectacular shots with my Canon!!

This is one of my favourite pictures of the whole trip

The effect of the setting sun is just spectacular!!!

Our second sunset was at Duong Dong Pier, near the Dinh Cao Rock Temple, by the night market.

Once more, we waited until the sun completely set, and I ended up with some of the best pictures I’ve ever taken. It was quite windy out so we were getting some small waves coming in, so I wound up sitting down on the pier, and waited for the right moments to get some pretty cool shots!!

Sun setting in Phu Quoc, Vietnam

My favourite shot of the week…

I also managed to get a pretty gorgeous shot of the moon once it came up…

That’s it for Phu Quoc! I have 2 more posts planned about our overall experiences in Laos and Vietnam, so stay tuned! I should be back soon!!!