Phu Quoc

You're probably pretty tired of hearing about the beautiful tropical islands we've been visiting while the weather turns ever colder and wetter back home.  We have just one more, about our last few days in Vietnam.  Then that will be it for the tropical paradise posts. We promise!  (Though, there is nothing we can do about the string of warm, sunny days we've been having as we travel through Cambodia back to Bangkok for our flight home.)


Our last stop in Vietnam was the small island of Phu Quoc, which is just off the Southern tip of Vietnam in the gulf of Thailand.  It seems like Vietnam would like to turn Phu Quoc into a top tourist destination for the region, but there is still a lot of work to do on that front.  We liked quite a bit about this island - the beaches, the small towns with little to no tourist shine, and warm, warm water.  But the unbelievable amount of garbage - mostly plastic bags and styrofoam - that littered not just the beaches, but the interior of the island as well were difficult to overlook.  We noticed one of the crew members on the boat we went diving off throw a plastic bag into the water after we finished lunch, and he isn't the only guy on the island, or Vietnam, or SE Asia, who doesn't give a second though to dropping something wherever he happens to be when he's finished with it.  In the spirit of Stephen Colbert we have to give a "Tip of the cap" to mother nature for creating such a beautiful place such as the island of Phu Quoc, but a "Wag of the finger" to us humans for polluting and making it ugly with mounds of trash.  Hopefully the Government and resorts on the island will work to clean it up (as there are also a few nature reserves on the island) in the next few years in an attempt to draw more of an international crowd.


We'd also like to give a "Wag of the finger" to the million crafty bugs of Phu Quoc.  Some bug bites are expected in certain climates, but the full-throttle attack on Annette's hands and feet was unprecedented.  She left the island with twelve bites on one hand - which swelled to look a like some pimple ridden teenage version of the Hamburger Helper glove.  If Annette thought she could kill the bugs off with litter, the way it kills fish and sea mammals, she would have been out there with the locals chucking plastic bags and old batteries left and right.  (JK Mother Earth! JK!)  The positive is that Ben's Bug Wipes get a "Tip of the cap" from us, as Annette's hands and feet were often the only untreated portions of her body and the bug repellent could very well be responsible for pushing the insect front back past her wrists and ankles (though a some of the bites could have been sustained on the beach, where sunscreen, not bug repellent, was the priority). 

OK. we got the nasty, negative stuff out of the way, here's what we liked:


Fresh Seafood
There is nothing quite like eating fresh seafood recently hauled from the ocean.  And if you get the opportunity to do so at a table so close to the water that the waves frequently kiss your toes, all the better.  We had some really great, fresh fish on Phu Quoc, grilled and fried, whole and as steaks.  The people there (excluding the cooks at the last restaurant we ate, where we received a whole fish smothered in hot ketchup and diced veggies) seem to know how to cook good seafood.  The island's economy is still centered around fishing, and the nightly sight of bright lights on the horizon was a bit of proof since those lights come from local fishing boats that use them to attract squid.  We also had some very good squid while on Phu Quoc, which is normally not either of our favorites. If we ever needed proof that seafood is better when it's really, really fresh, we found it on Phu Quoc.  We give a wholehearted "Tip of the cap" to the fresh fish and sea-friends (as well as the hands that pulled them from the gulf's waters) we enjoyed eating so much while on the island.

Seeing the Rest of the Island
The best way to see Phu Quoc is by motorbike.  Neither of us have ever driven a motorbike, scooter, or moped but we thought a small, laid-back island would be the place to try.  We rented one from our hotel, but the way the front-desk man ran out to check on us as Jeff was getting the hang of the thing in the parking lot was the first sign that maybe this was a bad idea.  But we persisted, and convinced him it would be OK.  With Annette on the back, hugging tight, Jeff slowly bumped and swerved his way up the long, uneven road from our hotel to the main road.  The final stretch of this journey is a small hill.  Jeff took the hill like a pro, but once on the main road was unable to complete his turn.  We were really lucky that there was no traffic coming either direction because we sped across the entire road, making only a small arc, nearly hitting some garbage bins.  Annette received a small scrape on her right knee, but we kept the bike from falling over or getting damaged.  This incident was all the proof we needed that driving a motorbike on our own was bad idea.  So we turned the bike around and headed back down the slope to the hotel, Jeff leaving some man points back by the garbage bins (but he picked up some common sense points by quitting before we both got hurt or hurt someone else). 

The front-desk man, confident that he'd been right all along, booked us motorbikes with drivers.  This turned out o be a great way to see the island, especially since we would have spent most of our time picking pieces of the bike up from the side of the road, or gravel from our legs.  Our drivers happily buzzed us in a Southern loop around the island, and we happily enjoyed the ride.  We went to some waterfalls, the most beautiful beach on the island, and watched the rest fly by from the back of our bikes.  We'd like to give a "Wag of the finger" to ourselves for nearly doing something so stupid, but a "Tip of the cap" to the drivers and the front-desk man for bailing us out and saving our day!

Mysterious, Wonderful Blue Lights
Walking on the beach our first night in Phu Quoc we were distracted from the bobbing fishing lights on the horizon in the distance by some much closer, much smaller blue lights on the beach.  We noticed just a few here and there at first, but soon we realized that we could watch dozens twinkle in the dark of the night water.  We found our later that the lights are bioluminescent plankton, which create the light from within their bodies with a special type of chemical reaction, usually to distract predictors.  The detailed scientific explanation made our heads hurt, but the sight itself was amazing to see.  We didn't see it on the same scale as these amazing little guys can sometimes be seen, and we only saw the blue lights in the water that first night (though we saw tiny blue lights on the beach all four nights we spent on Phu Quoc), but we were amazed and delighted by the small, personal light show we were treated to, almost as a "Welcome" to Phu Quoc from the sea.  We certainly give a "Tip of the Cap" to Mother Nature for creating marvelous little creatures such as glowworms and bioluminescent plankton.

Diving
We did two fun dives of the Southern end of Phu Quoc and it was nice to get back in the water.  We saw a weird slug thing and a spiky fish we'd never seen before.  We're not really sure the real names for the new sea-life we encountered, but we suppose that doesn't matter as much as getting down there and swimming with the fish, which was really nice to do considering it had been several months since our last dive and we won't be diving again (at least not in 75 degree water) for who knows how long.  An emphatic "Tip of the Cap" to who ever invented scuba diving!

Doing Nothing
Sometimes life is about doing nothing.  Just sitting back, listening to the surf, and watching the clouds move through the sky is your entire day.  A good book, maybe some music, and periodic trips to the water for a dip to cool off should be the extent of your mental and physical activities for this day.  Nine out of ten dentists agree, a "do nothing" day is good for your soul.  Our last day on Phu Quoc must have been like drinking a five-gallon bucket of chicken soup for our souls, because walking down the beach to the nicest resort around for lunch was the toughest thing we did all day beyond stumbling down to the edge of the gulf to splash around in the calm surf.  It was a hot, hot day and our trips down to the water were many and wonderful.  The water was amazingly warm, like people from the Northwest can hardly fathom, and the clear water was always a perfect respite when we reached a tipping point on our heat scales.  There wasn't much to look at in the blue, clear water in the way of coral or fish, but we always took a mask so we could marvel at the clarity anyway.  We'd tip our caps to doing nothing, but that would expend too much energy...