The last stop on our whistle-stop tour of Vietnam was 4/5 days on Phu Quoc Island. The idea being to have a good long relax at the end of our backpacking trip before heading home. It would have been nice to spend more time in HCMC, but I thought we’d need time to recuperate before heading back to the UK and work.
Prior to leaving the UK I found out that I was pregnant and in the very early stages. By this point in our trip my morning sickness had kicked in big time and other than the first day on Phu Quoc, which we spent sunbathing on the beautiful beach in front of our hotel, I spent the rest of our time in Phu Quoc either in bed or with my head over a toilet. At least it hadn’t started sooner as I’d have missed out on so much during the trip.
Poor Andrew had to therefore look after me, find food (western, as I couldn’t stomach anything else *insert embarrassed/ashamed face icon here*) and spend time alone exploring the island so he could enjoy the last part of the trip: even if I couldn’t!
I’ll let Andrew tell you about the day he hired a moped in order to explore the island…
After a couple of days of relaxing I start to get a bit restless, so Louise suggested I went out and explored a bit of the island as she wasn’t feeling great. So I set off with my wallet and passport and went to rent a bike from one of the locals.
After a bit of research the previous day I managed to persuade the rental place outside our hotel to rent me one of theirs for a significant reduction due to one a couple of miles down the road being a lot cheaper. Getting into the haggling over what is probably £1 or £2 is what I tend to do when I get caught up in smaller currencies and then I feel guilty over quibbling for what is pretty much nothing to us and a significantly larger sum to the person I’m haggling from.
Anyway, I set off with my lovely old moped and as a bit of practice (I don’t ride motor bikes outside of east Asia) I decided to head through Duong Dong to their lighthouse. I got off, had a very brief look around, had a picture taken on my camera by a Japanese tourist (no joke!) and jumped back on the bike.
I then headed to the peppercorn farm along the ‘TL47’ that I had seen on the map the day before. I love a good bit of pepper and it intrigued me as to how it was grown and what it looked like on the plant. I arrived to find a tour about to start and got shown around the farm in a small group.
Turns out the peppercorns are just dried out berries – which surprised me. The difference between the types being that black pepper corns are dried red berries, green peppercorns are dried green berries and white peppercorns are the seed from the middle of the red berries that have been taken out and cleaned.
All of the peppercorns are laid out in the sun after picking and just left to dry. A pretty efficient way of making the most of the surroundings. Once I finished here I bought a tub of peppercorns and got back on the road, next stop – a nearby temple that looked interesting on the map.
Su Muong Pagoda is a small set of pagodas set high in the hills with a small number of monks on site. I arrived and started showing myself around and was greeted by a small monk in a grey ‘monk suit’. To this day I don’t know what that signifies and why he wasn’t wearing orange, or even if this meant he wasn’t a monk at all.
As I was shown round, pointing at this, nodding at something else, he offered to take a photo of me with a large statue. I handed the camera over and he took the photo. He then showed me the donation bowl to which I felt obliged to donate. It’s always a decent idea to have some small notes for these occasions in the pocket and order them from small to large in order to be able to tell exactly what you are pulling out so as not to show whoever it is that’s expecting the tip or donation how much you actually have.
Things continued in this way for the next half an hour until my small note collection was turning into a miniscule collection of large notes. Before I managed to make up a good enough excuse to get rid of him, the monk grabbed my nether regions (possibly for some fertility pagoda’s benefit) and expected a tip – ended up giving him about £10 just to shut him up and almost ran out of there from one of the highest pagodas! Which is no mean feat!
Back on the bike, silently crying to myself I headed to the south of the Island to the fishing village of An Thoi. The drive down had 2 options, the longer and safer motorway journey or the far more appealing and desolate track route.
Obviously there was only one choice, so I made sure I had enough fuel as I wasn’t expecting the track to have any petrol stations and started following my trusty map south.
The journey down was an experience in itself; It starts off as a track through the forest to which you are unsure if it’s even a road and then turns in to a straight line along the west coast beach. Along this road, which is about 30km, I saw perhaps three vehicles. It gave me a sense of isolation which was almost eerie at points. I stopped the bike at one point in particular that I could just see horizon in either direction along the ruler straight road with the sea on one side. There was a building that looked abandoned and dilapidated and I sat on the beach in silence just watching the sea and enjoying the detachment from civilisation.
Once arriving in An Thoi, I simply rode around looking around. I found some interesting Pagodas around the town and saw the locals going out in their fishing boats. Not a single tourist in sight. It was nice to see a part of Vietnam that didn’t appear to be greatly influenced by foreign invasion.
I headed back north along the motorway this time as I was conscious that my bike had to be back (and I had left my pregnant wife in the hotel room) and came across a Vietnam War monument. It’s a big sculpture that has the moulding of many different people in the middle of different sizes to symbolise that people can break chains together.
I got back on the road and tried to make up some time; cue the toll road that I completely forgot I had to pay for (lucky I made the move when I did from my little Monk friend in the mountains as I only just had enough cash to cover it).
I got back just after dark and went to tell Louise all about my eventful day.
And that concludes (finally!) our visit to Vietnam 🙂
LOU'S TRAVELS 