Phu Quoc Island

Our journey to Phu Quoc Island in the Indian Ocean had a somewhat rushed start because we had misjudged the amount of time it takes to get to the airport in the early afternoon. Saigon has a third rush hour each day -- the moped brigade hits the streets for lunch. Traffic in Vietnam is completely insane, but Saigon is the winner by a wide margin.

We walked up to the check-in counter just 32 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart. This was lucky for us because they stop checking people in 30 minutes before departure. Then we hit a bit of a snag with Tianne's passport. All hotesl in Vietnam that we stayed at required you to turn over your passport until check-out. This was of concern at the start of our trip, as your passport is your most important travel document. But it didn't take too long for us to get used to the routine, and at least you didn't have to worry about your passport getting stolen or lost (provided you remembered to ask for it at check-out, of course).

Anyway, back to Tianne. When we booked our Vietnam Airlines tickets, we obviously didn't have them with us. The name on the ticket has to match your passport. This wasn't an issue for me -- Jody Yvonne Cox is pretty straightforward and appears on all of my official documents. Tianne had assumed her middle name was on her passport, but it wasn't. The agent at the airport made her go to get her ticket reissued -- at a cost of 50,000 dong (about CDN$3.50).

To complicate matters a bit, there was a standby group of about seven people that just needed one more seat on the plane. I learned later that our agent kept saying that the seat was checked in but the name was going to change, while the other agent kept saying that she wanted the seat. As we've said many times on this trip, sometimes it is useful that Tianne can understand Vietnamese, and sometimes we are better off not knowing. At least the agent checked the luggage right away so it made it on the plane! When everything was finally sorted out (about 15 minutes later) we had to run through security to catch the bus out onto the tarmack.

The plane ride itself -- which took about 45 minutes -- was uneventful. We landed, got our luggage and boarded a minibus for the Mai House Resort with a couple from London, England. It was quite hot (around 90F) and the van had no air conditioning. Even so, we were enjoying the scenery of this cute little island. Then the van made some choking noises and died a few kilometers from the airport. The driver couldn't get it started and we ended up sitting for about 30 minutes. We thought that someone had driven away on a moped to pick up a part for the van. Instead, it returned with a large plastic jug of gas. Definitely a different world on Phu Quoc!

When we continued, the paved road quickly turned into a red and bumpy dirt road. Then we turned down a narow and even bumpier driveway, which led down to the resort. The resort was actually about a dozen bungalows set back slightly from the ocean. Our bungalow (#8) had a very nice view of the ocean. The cottage was quite rustic in design but did have running water, electricity and a super-duper mosquito net.

The weather was quite bizarre that day -- hot and sunny one minute and rain and thunderstorms the nedt minute. It was quite wild. We didn't really do too much that day. We went for a walk on the beach, lazed around, and had a snack and some beer and wine at the resort restaurant. We watched the sunset and ordered some barbequed red snapper, noodles and rice. We didn't realize that we were ordering the entire fish though! Let's just say that it was far from our cheapest meal in Vietnam, but still less that we'd pay at home. It was delicious. We were in bed by 9am and I had my best sleep of the entire trip.

It was wonderful to wake up to the sounds of the surf. I went for an early morning swim in the Gulf of Thailand before breakfast. The water was extremely warm and very salty. We enjoyed a really nice (and long) breakfast at the resort and took another walk on Long Beach. The weather had been super all morning, but we still managed to get caught in the only downpour of the day when we were about 2kms away from our resort. We had a lazy afternoon of swimming, reading books, and lazing under our beach hut.

We had a nice dinner at the resort (carmelized tuna -- but not the entire fish this time) and ventured down to the swankiest restaurant on the strip, The Veranda, for dessert. It was a nice place, and the second floor balcony had a great view of the stars and the fishing boats. The dessert was fancy and tasted okay, but it cost more han our entire dinner at the resort. To compensate for the over-priced desserts, we stole some Internet time on the first floor.

The next day we had an earlier breakfast and decided to split a cab to the Duong Dong market with the British couple (Darrell and Jane). We could have walked the five kilometers but it was scorching hot, and... well... we were lazy! The market was quite typical with fruits, veggies, and seafood. It was interesting to see the houses and the wharf though. We managed to kill about an hour, and then we tried to find a taxi to take us back to the resort. Not a single one to be found but probably a hundred motorbike taxis. We ended up geting one of the "moto taxi" drivers to call a friend with a car on his cellphone.

We enjoyed another great afternoon on the beach and it was a beautiful day -- barely a cloud in the sky. It sprinkled for a few minutes while we were having a few drinks at the restaurant (so it didn't bother us at all). When the skies cleared we set off along the beach in search of some ice cream. This was not as easy as it may sound. It is the off season right now, so most places have unplugged their freezers to save money.

The only place we could find some ice cream was a German biergarten (yes, in Vietnam) at the end or resort row. It was all-natural ice cream from New Zealand and it was delicious. We stuck around for some fries and pineapple schnapps.

It's funny how small the world can be sometimes, and I had another one of these experiences at the German place. The owner was talking to a couple who mentioned they hadn't run into many other Canadians on their trip. Afterwards, we introduced ourselves as Canadians, and discovered that the couple was from Nanaimo, B.C., which is where I went to highschool. We started throwing around a few names and discovered that the guy (Shawn) used to be roommates with my cousin Ryan! Definitely a small world! The invited us out for dinner after supper, but we were running quite late and needed to pack so we didn't make it out. Hope Shawn and Jen had a few pints for us though!

Morning came far too early as we had to catch an 8:20am flight back to Saigon. We arrived at the airport way too early (thanks to our hotel) but there were no new incidents to report. In fact, it was kind of boring.

We are now back at the Elios Hotel in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). We're hoping to finish up all of our shopping today so we can have a relaxing final day in Vietnam tomorrow. I consider shopping to be fun, so I may be back in the markets again tomorrow anyway. We are heading home very early on Monday morning. Our first flight (from Saigon to Hong Kong) leaves at 6:10am. The return journey will take us around 24 hours, but twith the time change we will be arriving in Ottawa on Monday night at around 7:30pm ET. Hopefully we'll get more sleep on the return journey than we managed on the way here :-)