After spending a short night in Rach Gia after arriving at 3am, we took a ferry to Phu Quoc where we spent the next 3 days. The ferry was small hydrofoil and it took almost 3 hours to get to the island. We grabbed taxis with some girls from Australia, got to town and drop off our bags. We rushed out to the beach just as the sun was setting.
The next day we rented scooters, which was awesome. You probably have seen the videos of the motorbikes and cars on the streets zipping in and out of everything. It definitely wasn’t very safe, but with our rusty old helmets, we were right along side them, zipping along almost 18 miles to reach the southern tip of the island. The beach was incredible. White sandy beaches, and warm shallow water that was a light crystal blue color. We hung out for a couple hours, eventually scootering up a couple miles to another beach where I had a fantastic lunch of fresh shrimp and scallops (Mother and TJ both had bowls of white rice). After having spent most of the day swimming around, we headed back, dodging other riders, construction trucks, potholes, and mud pits, to make it back to town in time to hike up a small mountain to have a dip in the stream and waterfall. We made it back to town just before dark to have some fresh Pho soup, and some ice cream cones (Again, Mother and TJ we “forced” to eat some rice, albeit fried this time).
The next day we also headed up to the island’s northern most point. It was a crazy drive along deserted highways, and some fairly rough dirt/mud roads. It was close to the same distance as the southern end. As we were almost to the beach, we turned into a pepper farm. Phu Quoc, and some of the Cambodian Islands around here are famous for their black and white pepper. They plants stalks of them and they grow just like a vine. It was really spicy, and had a sort of zip to it. We ended up buying a bottle to try and bring back home. At the beach, I had another fresh plate of shrimp. Most of the restaurants, and the vendors at the market have fish tanks full of water where they keep the fish, sharks, lobsters, crab, shrimps and scallops alive until you order them. You can watch them scoop it out of the tank and get thrown on the grill. Super fresh. On the way back the road was pretty rough and it took a bit longer. Coming around a corner we faced a dead end, so I turned around (TJ was on the back of mine) and we apparently startled Mom because she (while going) completely took her hands off and proceeded to tip over into a ditch. She still doesn’t know what happened, but I guess seeing us turned around startled her, but we had a good laugh.
The next day we headed out on the 10am ferry to Ha Tien. Our last stop on Vietnam. We grabbed a bus, and crossed into Cambodia, and arrived in Kampot a couple hours later.
