Recharging Batteries | Phu Quoc | Vietnam

We did it. We had our time off on the little island we where dreaming of since we plant our TATW. This was we have been working for seven days a week almost the whole past year. Just chilling, relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

We left Vinh Long by bus to via Rach Gia and one day later we crossed over to Phu Quoc by boat. Even Carmen was afraid of the water trip (due to the last one during the thunder storm) we had a pleasant ride with the very comfortable “Super Dong III”.

Phu Quoc is a little island in the Chinese Sea which has a lot of origin Villages as well as growing tourism. People say it’s like Koh Samui 25h years ago. You find a lot of very quite and peaceful places without any touristic touches. On the other hand, there are a lot of new Restaurants offering western food along the main beach close to capital Duong Dong.

What we did?

Basically nothing than putting our feeds in the sand, enjoying the sun and eating delicious food. we rent motorbikes to explore the island and it was great, especially the red, muddy streets were a highlight. we went to the beautiful Bai Sao beach on the southeast side of the island, and get exactly what we expected…a pretty long beach with white sand and calm blue water. just two or three little bars/accommodations were available to get some cool drinks and good food. we loved it!

When we arrived, the mini bus brought us obviously to a place for budget tourists as we do not look like luxury travelers :-) All fine with this and we slept two nights at that place (Vien Than) for two nights. Not just because the little Vietnamese guy, who lived 22 years in Munich, new the underground station Frankfurterring as we told him we live in the north of Munich. We enjoyed very good food at the little restaurant near by (run by a German guy) and had time to check out other accommodations.

We found Cassia Cottages, run by an American, and fell in love with it. Totally nice, very clean and fantastic service/staff. Not just the possibility to “cool” down in the pool made us staying there, also it was close to our favorite restaurant. It wasn’t cheap (compared to Vietnamese standards) but due to the good Dollar rate it was not too bad either.

The rooms were beautiful and the entire area was like a big green garden. Nothing short of fabulous! From here we did our day trips, lied on the pool or beach, got massages and to be honest we were very lazy regarding photography. We once went out to see some “waterfalls”. Nothing special if you have seen some real waterfalls back home though.

One thing which will always be in our heads is, that we saw some people killing a dog (to eat). We heard that something was whining, well it was more screaming for life. We could not figure out first what it was, we thought it’s a pig. But walking closer to the noise that was falling silence we saw the young light brown dog. Carmen had a dog for 17 years and even she didn’t see it, she got very emotional. Mostly poor people eat dogs around here. Should taste like chicken people say and they also mentioned that brown dogs taste better than black ones. Well as this is maybe a cultural thing, we kind of understand this, meat is meat and as we eat chicken and pork or beef, others eat other animals. This being said, mostly all the animals we see here on markets or on the farms have a good life before they end up being on the table.

We had great times meeting two Dutch dudes as one of the is a camera man and the other one a editor. Guess what, talking about filming and photography was a big topic and since we just met them again in Kampot/Cambodia we hang out again with them and even did some plans to shoot a short film soon. These guys where doing really great short movies about their trips through Vietnam and Laos. Very inspiring, check out there blog, its worth it.

And there was this other bar, Amigos, run by Australians we hang out quite often to talk to them and drink a few beers. Very nice people and a cool thing they did is, the bar is more for their staff, than for making money. They left home and started this restaurant because a bunch of people left their work due to a hotel that got bankrupt. Sure they wanted to change their daily life as well but still you could feel that all of them feel like a big family. The last night at the island, we shot for food :-) The Amigos needed a few photos from the bar and the bungalows so we made a deal with the owner :-)

We left Phu Quoc yesterday again by boat to Ha Thien and caught a little bus further to Kep which is already in Cambodia. First day behind us we have to say, that we are going to love Cambodia too. It’s just beautiful here, wait for pictures to come soon.

Resume:

Even though we only traveled in the south of Vietnam and only three weeks, we had great experiences and lot of fun. The people are very nice and super friendly. We wrote that already, but you get a smile and a hello on every other corner. Everyone helps you and people are very honest regarding business and in general. We totally recommend coming here even if you just have a short time for holiday. Let us know about it if you do!

Here are a few shots from our stay at the island. Even we already showed a few on Facebook, we show them here too. Not everyone is on Facebook though, donno why :-)

Greetings from Kep, Carmen and Ingo