After the sensory, visual and constant travel overload of Burma, The island of Phu Quoc was going to be a welcome relief, as was access to a regular wifi connection. Flying gout of Burma, via Ho Chi Minh City and having to deal with the point to point airline Vietjet Air so lets get off the plane, collect our bags, go out through immigration, queue up, check in again, another immigration line through domestic and back through to airside again. Lets then grapple with the local culture of pushing, shoving, sneaking in, to get onto the bus to get you to the plane and repeated all over again to run off said bus and scramble to get onto plane. Its a big game to try and get in there before them… come to think of it, perhaps they are doing he same to me!
Driving in from the airport we watched the bright lights, the touts equivalent to Magaluf / San Antonio / Kuta and were quite happy to be driven past them… and onto a dirt road to somewhere a little calmer. On my last RTW I don’t think I would have been sharing the same sentiments; just an age thing
Peppercorn Beach Resort was better than what I had anticipated – modern quiet aircon accommodation with wifi on the beach – when did we become so reliant on the internet? The only think to beware of was coconuts and branches falling from the palm trees.
We made two escapes from the beach… one day we headed to Duong Dong, the main city of the island. Jumped in the mini van at 2pm, dropped off at 2.40pm. Covered all relevant sites by 3.30pm and killed 2 hours at the light house and Buddy’s ice cream shop before heading into the night markets to get some fresh fish – well there was also the choice of frog or snake.
Our second day trip out was to VinPearl Land. We ignored the TripAdvisor reviews to our detriment. We thought we could get at least a half day out of the place… no chance! 4 water slide rides later we were done. 3 slides were shut. 1 vertical drop slide had a weight limit and the other needed four people on the dinghy to get down – not a hope of that, as there was no one in the queue behind us. We debated the merits of complaining, but locating an actual manager, try and explain our issue and try to translate the vietnamese english response (even though their english would be a lot better than our vietnamese) was just going to take too much time and effort in our very packed day. We were in the park for less than an hour…
5 days vanish quickly and it was soon time to think about the next destination; the not-quite-so-tranquil Bangkok!
Vonn Voyage 