After doing quite a lot of travelling in the previous weeks through Laos and Cambodia, we decided we needed a little holiday. Some of you might think that sounds ridiculous and even say “but you’re already on holiday!”. But that’s where you are wrong. Yes, we are out in Southeast Asia living our best lives but travelling can also be really stressful and tiring. I had picked up a chesty cough somewhere along the way, so we took this as my body needing some sun, sea and sand therapy to help get me better. Phu Quoc is a Vietnamese island residing along the southern coastline within the gulf of Thailand. You do not need a visa to go here unlike mainland Vietnam.
We booked to stay near Phnom Penh airport the night before travelling as our flight was very early the next morning. However when we arrived in the far outskirts of the city, near the airport, our Grab driver didn’t actually know where we were trying to go. He first took us to the airport despite this not being the set down location we had specified. We were dropped off on a street corner where the accomodation was specified to be located on booking.com. The building was locked up and uninviting. For the next 1-2hours, we wandered around the neighbourhood, got help from some locals who spoke little English, had a phone call from the accomodation owner who was Chinese and spoke zero English, who proceeded to tell us to go somewhere else for “pick up”. By then Luke and I were completely fed up and gave up trying to find it and walked down the street and paid to stay at another guesthouse for the night. Annoyed and tired we had a feast of crisps, coke and instant noodle cups before trying to getting some rest. This was wishful thinking, as a ginormous cockroach decided to buzz around our room at 3am, resulting in me screeching for Luke to kill it! Poor Luke dealt with it bravely and as a way of saying thanks for the overpriced grimy accomodation, we stashed the dead beastie underneath a cup and left it in the middle of the floor for the owner to find later. We checked in for our flight at 5am and flew to Ho Chi Minh as part of a transfer flight before flying to Phu Quoc. What we didn’t realise was by collecting our baggage and re-checking in for our second flight, this counted as us entering Vietnam, meaning an official visa was stamped in our passports. As a British citizen this isn’t a problem, as we are eligible for 15days free visa. I will explain in my next blog post as to why this particular visa stamp became such a stressful burden. Our second flight landed on the island of Phu Quoc at around 11am.
We stayed 5nights at a place called Sen Viet Phu Quoc Resort. Our lovely little room was right beside the pool and had its own little deck to sit out on our front. My favourite feature of the room was the outside bathroom. You could shower whilst listening to the birds, frogs and insects all singing at night time which was pretty cool. Phu Quoc is 48km from top to bottom and has a population of just over 100,000 people. Our resort was a little way out from the centre but did provide free use of bicycles. We made use of these one day, cycling the 9km through town to a beach on the other side where we met up with a friend. This involved cycling on very bumpy dirt roads, through bustling fish markets and of course trying to avoid getting run over by mad local drivers. It’s fair to say we did well to survive the experience and definitely earned the sore bottoms after cycling 18km on unpadded seats. The sea water is warm to swim in around the island, making it a really nice place to go for a dip. It is however blood boiling to find so much plastic and other trash on the beaches. It is everywhere! And this is not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately. As a tourist the best you can do is dispose of waste properly and decline plastic straws/ bags but the locals are avid users of single use plastics. I suspect they are not solely to blame however from some of the waste I saw washing up originating from many places around the world.
It became apparent during our stay here that Phu Quoc is under mass construction. Everywhere we went another huge hotel or resort was in the process of being built. The island does boast claim to having the longest cable car in the world, as verified by the Guinness Book of World Records. It is run by a company called Sunworld. The cable car is almost 8km long and runs from the southern tip, over coral reefs and other small islands, to a place called Hon Thom, also known as Pineapple Island. Personally being absolutely petrified of heights, to the point it makes my feet go numb, I was not relishing in the idea of being suspended at a great height for this distance. The cable car ride was genuinely really enjoyable and enabled us to enjoy spectacular bird’s-eye views. The vivid turquoise sea and hundreds of fishing boats made a breath-taking sight. It took around 15minutes to reach one side to the other. They are in the midst of building a water park which did not look very far along in construction as we sailed overhead. I disembarked the cable car with shaky legs but felt a little proud of my accomplishment despite my phobia. Our afternoon consisted of eating BBQ kebabs with cold beer, sunbathing on a white sand beach and swimming in crystal clear seawater. Oh and making absolute fools of ourselves on a giant floating inflatable obstacle course.
Some of the days we spent in a Phu Quoc consisted of going no further than the pool on the resort. We also made use of the free tennis courts and pretended to be professionals. That was until the sun had us drenched in sweat and drained of energy after about 30minutes. Other days we would get a lift into town and just enjoy going for a drink somewhere near the beach. We enjoyed a spectacular sunset one evening whilst sitting in a beachfront bar after having some food. Being static for a short time and spending some down time together, was just what we needed at this stage in our trip. Plus the tanned skin and freckles help us look ever more the part of travelling backpackers.
Gone Travelling 
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