Happy New Year... Again!

Our border crossing from Cambodia to Vietnam was surprisingly straightforward.

We were picked up outside our hotel by a minivan, admittedly 40 minutes later than scheduled, but this gave us time to talk to a retired Australian called Trevor who after a serious heart attack four years ago is now spending months at a time travelling the world.

At the border, our driver dropped us off and told us to go to the passport office. With our exit stamps in our passports, we walked the 400m or so across no man’s land to the Vietnamese border. Here we were made to fill in a medical form and have our temperature taken. Unsurprisingly given it was the height of the day we were both pretty warm! Having done our research before getting to the border, we walked away when asked to pay the dollar for the medical check, apparently it’s not compulsory!

While this was going on, a Vietnamese man had run up to us demanding our passports and we had an anxious ten minute wait until he reappeared, but with stamps in our passport we headed out to another minibus. This one was a little crowded but it was only a short journey to Ha Tien town centre, where we were then taken to the ferry port for our boat to Phu Quoc. All in all, the journey took an hour and a half, which was pretty quick!

Unfortunately, we’d just missed a ferry so had to wait half an hour for the next one but that worked out well as it dropped us at a different ferry port closer to our accommodation, where we picked up another bus to take us to our hostel.

Our first impressions of Vietnam was the noise and the sheer number of flags everywhere, on each lamppost! It was pretty overwhelming, which coupled with a somewhat basic dorm room did nothing for my spirits! But we were told there was a good sunset from the beach so we went to check it out and it didn’t disappoint!

To calm our nerves, we walked along the beach to a rather fancy resort for dinner. The Spice Garden proved just what we needed and had the best toilets we’ve seen in a long while! We attempted a game of Clue (or Cluedo if you’re not American) but it doesn’t work so well with only two players and half the cards missing!!

It was the lunar new year, or Tet, while we were on Phu Quoc. We’d been warned that all the Vietnamese go home during this period and a lot of things shut for up to a week afterwards so we spent our first morning on Phu Quoc sorting out our onward travel for the next ten days.

With accommodation and transport sorted, we got a taxi to the night market, where we bought a SIM card. This was not a straightforward process, as I’m sure James will explain in one of his blogs! We then had a walk around the various food stalls, walked to the beach and then found a delightful little cafe with a roof terrace and WiFi to pass a few more hours until evening.

We headed back to the food market for dinner, where we heard there was a firework display being put on at the old airfield to celebrate Tet (it was essentially New Year’s Eve). We passed some time in a chilled out rooftop bar with some very adorable kittens before walking to the airfield.

Another key thing you quickly realise in Vietnam is the complete disregard for rules. The centre of the airfield had been closed to traffic, but a number of scooters had still somehow made it into the complex. There was a big stage with acts ranging from a magician to a boy band and a children’s dance troop. Not really understanding a word, we went to find the fireworks.

This was exactly what you’d expect from a Vietnamese fireworks display, with a complete disregard for safety. There were dozens of giant boxes of fireworks no more than 10m back from the edge of the runway, with a small rope and a couple of army soldiers asking people to keep back. We chose to sit at the other edge of the runway with people sitting in front of us up to about the middle of the runway. As soon as the first fireworks went off, there was a rush as everyone realised they were too close and ran back to a safer distance! I’ve never been to a fireworks display where the fireworks are directly overhead before - it was a slightly unnerving experience, especially when one firework went a bit rogue and a couple of firecrackers were set off in the crowd! There were some pretty mental fireworks set off as well. All in all, it was definitely an experience!

The next amusing thing was watching everyone trying to leave on scooters afterwards. It was absolute carneige and we ended up walking about half way home before we managed to find an available taxi to take us the rest of the way. It was certainly entertaining!

The next day we hired scooters to explore more of the island. The main ring road around Phu Quoc is a delight, smooth tarmac and practically empty once you get north of the main town. We were heading for Starfish Beach in the north of the island, which is down a dirt track for the last 15 minutes of the drive which was a bit more of a challenge but still better than some roads we’d ridden in Cambodia.

We visited a floating village first for a quick drink before heading to Starfish Beach proper for lunch. We had some delicious shrimp in tamarind sauce before reading and blogging in the shade to avoid the heat of the day. The sea at the beach is super shallow so we wandered out to look at the starfish, which were everywhere!

We continued north to Local Beach for a quick drink and what we’d hoped would be a view back over Bokom National Park in Cambodia where we’d been a few days before, but it was cloudy so difficult to see. Instead, I was entertained by a small child of no more than 4 or 5 who came over when she saw me take my phone out, took it from me, went to the App Store and proceeded to download a word puzzle game which we played for about 15 minutes! I was amazed at how well she knew what to do!

In our short drive, we managed to see enough “odd” things to fill my Vietnamese summary on their own, but with it only being our second day in the country I thought I’d write them here instead! First there was a small child of about 2 or 3 sitting on a plastic car crossing a dual carriageway on his own. Luckily there were very few cars about and he made it across safely, but it was still pretty scary to see! Then we rounded a corner to see a herd of cows being herded by a man on a scooter the wrong way up the dual carriageway which we had to avoid. Then finally as we came back into town, a woman with a 3m long drain pipe sitting across her scooter was driving the wrong way up the road. Just bonkers!

That evening, with it essentially being New Year’s Day, not many places were open so we went for dinner at the Indian restaurant across the road, which was the busiest we’d seen it, probably because it was the only place to eat!

The next day, we went to the south of the island, where a cable car takes you to one of the smaller islands. However this isn’t just any cable car, it’s the world’s longest non-stop, three-rope, sea-crossing cable car! And it was pretty impressive, particularly the huge pylons, which were so high, every time you went over one your stomach lurched, much to the delight of the screaming Chinese tourists.

One of the most impressive and infuriating things about the cable car was the queue. With it being Tet, it was particularly busy but it was our first real experience of being mixed in with loads of Chinese tourists, who have no concept of queuing and basically rush to the front, pushing past everyone in their way. The only saving grace was that James and I were head and shoulders taller than all of them! Clearly the staff were used to dealing with this and so kept us in designated pens at various stages on the way to getting onto the cable car. It was not a quick process!

What we arrived at was decidedly odd. In a few years it will be a fantastic theme park but we had definitely come too early as it was mostly a building site!

Again, everything was controlled so you weren’t allowed to just walk along to the beach, you had to be ferried there by golf buggy. The beach itself though was quite pretty and there were a lot of facilities there, including showers, changing rooms and lockers. There was also a large buffet restaurant but the queue was huge so we went for a lovely swim in the sea first. However by the time we got out and dried off, the buffet had closed. So we queued up again to get the golf buggy back, only to find there was no food being served here either so we jumped back onto the cable car to the mainland. Unfortunately, we were too late for food here too, so we got the bus back to our hostel and eventually managed to find an open restaurant on the beach there.

While it was definitely worth riding the cable car, we should maybe have followed some of the other tourists and gone straight back again, as although the beach was nice, it wasn’t any nicer than the one by our hostel. Maybe in a few years when the water park is complete it’ll be more worth the visit.

We went for another swim at sunset on the beach by our hostel and enjoyed watching people making ridiculous poses for the perfect Instagram photo!

After showering, we wandered into town for dinner. Our first choice restaurant wasn’t open so we went to a restaurant across the road and had a tasty meal. Unfortunately the bill took ages to come so by the time we’d paid we just went back to the hostel as it was pretty late and we were leaving early the next day.

After the initial shock, we settled in quite well to Phu Quoc and found it on the whole a relaxing place to spend a few days and regroup. It did feel a bit more like a resort than a travellers location. This may be because you can get direct flights from the UK and you don’t need a visa if you don’t leave the island, so most people had probably visited as a single destination.

It was also a fun place to be for Tet, with lots of festivities, including people riding around in the back of pickup trucks, banging drums for three days straight! It was nice to see all the decorations, with many trees adorned with yellow flowers and red envelopes. The horror stories of not being able to get money out or eat anywhere during Tet didn’t prove to be an issue for us and overall it was an enjoyable experience. Happy New Year to you all!​