Touring Phu Quoc

So after Robbie’s slight downer on arrival into mass tourism we tried to keep our chins up between the “see it now while it’s still like this” urge and the guilty knowledge that we and our fellow paradise-seekers are the ones responsible for turning this place on its head.

We spent the first night at a great white beach “Ong Long” beautiful for swimming and Aran happily played with some Aussie families amongst starfish while we attended to Zev’s sand phobia and tried impossibly to encourage him to free himself of the towel and touch the sand with his feet, or possibly even with his hands but to no avail.

Next day we took off for our cycle tour of the island to see what we could find over the next 6 days.

Fishing villages, hills (the first ones in all of the trip so far) proper jungles in the National Park in the interior (the rest of the trees in southern Vietnam have been chopped), animals and birds aplenty. We cycled along seriously muddy roads and stayed in various locations dotted around the island, from a pepper-farm turned craft brewery in the interior to a plush bungalow on the eastern seafront.

They told us we wouldn’t make it the 18kms on this road on our bikes!

Unfortunately, the rest of the island didn’t compare for swimming or beaches, being a bit murky near the coast and covered in washed ashore plastic…

This styrofoam boat offered its services for pirate trips to Cambodia. No visas required!

We still had a good time. Good food. Nice places to stay. For now Zev can’t tell the difference between bath water and turquoise ocean, and would be happy to slosh about in sewage if we let him. Aran was delighted with our sea kayak trips from the guesthouse and flat screen TV. Happy kids, happy parents.

Aran doing some schoolwork

Pepper! Lots

From here it is back to the mainland and ready ourselves for next leg, crossing the border to Cambodia.