Phu Quoc

After two months of travelling we finally find our beach paradise. Not only is the sand blissfully clear of rubbish and people but the sea is turquoise and clean disturbed only by the distant chug of the fishing trawlers and flashlight bedecked squid boats. To heighten our already considerable excitement the sun has got its hat on for a change and our chosen ‘res’ is very ‘des’ complete with it’s own pool and palm tree at the photographically perfect 45% angle. Even the NZ Pinot Noir is at a reasonable price…

Even the discovery of a hornet’s nest above our bathroom fails to dampen our spirits despite 3 or 4 permanent waspish incumbents during defenceless ablutions. I decide to seal off the offending suite and report the infestation to our amiable Kiwi manager Jim. He does nothing about it but in a very caring avuncular way so we don’t mind.

Poor old Jim is a bit like a space shuttle with a blaze of activity on arrival and departure but a lot of floating around in between. He did recommend a useful route via the beach to the market on our first morning but for anything else we would have to speak to Tony….
It was fun splashing down the shoreline with the kids and selfishly pleasing to cut through the Vietnam owned Saigon Phu Quoc Resort. This pricey ****hotel was complete with its very own tacky plastic elephant slide and bustling reception crammed with suitcases. Herds of tourists were flocking in and out or simply grazing. We loved our Cassia Cottages with its immaculate adjoining rooms, even if it was named after a non-indigenous type of Cinnamon native mainly to Southern China.
We hopped on ‘motos’ for the last part of the journey to the capital Duang Dong and scooted over the river of the same name to the fruit/fish market – a blaze of colourful stalls with precariously stacked purple dragonfruit, spiky red rambutans and green oranges. Moving on to the fish market we thought we had delved a bit far on coming across a grim faced man with a large saw next to the eel buckets. Happily it turns out he is just the iceman who gives us a quick demonstration of his art. The meat stalls were potentially scarier still as, having just finished Charlotte’s web, Ruby came face to face with Wilbur. Sadly the rest of his body was missing but she wasn’t too fazed and still tucked into her pork chops for dinner.
In our continuing quest to ensure all Harley’s shirts have irremovable chocolate stains we stopped off at Buddy’s ice cream parlour where out of a possible 26 flavours you can guess which one Harley plumped for. The Ozzie owner mentioned that a couple of weeks before a German had managed to get a visa on arrival in Cambodia via the recently opened border near Ha Tine. If true this would save the considerable mileage
and expense of travelling to our next stop Kep via Saigon and Phnom Penh (80km and £8 instead of 800km and £400). I decided we had better check with Tony.

The guidebook said Tony was easy to find and likely that he would find us, so when someone came over to our table that evening during a feast of freshly barbequed squid and prawn, I thought we might be in luck.

“Tony?” I politely enquired thinking the odds were pretty favourable, as there are only 80 thousand people on the whole island. He introduced himself as An Thu, whose parents owned the fabulous shack we were dining in, and he knew Tony as he was in the same line of work – tourist tours. We were duly charmed and 12 hrs + 45$ later we found ourselves crammed into a minibus with 16 other naïve fun seekers on a snorkelling/fishing trip. It was impossible to see more than a few feet even if you could find a mask and flippers to fit your massive head/feet but Ruby did catch her first ever fish and we did visit a couple of beautiful white sandy beaches.

The final day in paradise we trekked up to a jungle waterfall for a cooling dip under the cascade. We then went on to The Mango Bay Resort, which was beautiful in its own remote and rocky way. Lunch was great too particularly if you like mango for starter, main course and desert. In the evening we bumped into another tour guide.

“Tony?” I enquired hopefully. Close but no cigar as it was actually Tony’s son who confirmed it would be possible to get a visa at the border and agreed to take us as far as Ham Tinh port where our guidebook comfortingly informed us that there were “on-again off-again rickety boats to Ha Tien” which were considered to be “dangerous and not worth the risk”. Ho hum in for a penny….

We said our goodbyes to the affable Jim who was in turbo-charged departure mode, assuring us that the hornet’s nest was next on his list of things to do and insisting we take his card in the seemingly quite likely event that we were to encounter some terrible peril on our daring trip through practically unchartered territory. He handed us over to Tony’s son and an older man, surely his father the elusive Tony himself. I presumed this was the case and called him Tony all the way to the longest jetty in Vietnam where we joined a hundred or so Cambodians (definitely no foreigners at all), several tons of fish and a few motorbikes on our characterful vessel bound for Ha Tien and the Cambodian border. Karen is still convinced our driver was far too young to be Tony who must therefore remain at large yet never seen rather like a modern day version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.