Some images and stories
are imprinted in one’s memory forever. It has been so for Phu Quoc Island in Kiên Giang Province. I
was probably a teenager when I first heard about and saw postcards of Phu
Quoc Island among my father's piles of accumulated magazines and newspapers. It was like a mirage that appeared before my eyes at regular
intervals. As a girl from a poor family, it felt like a dreamland that
existed in make-believe; a place that I would never be able to see and touch
and smell. But that did not stop me from dreaming, and I know that
dreams are the trigger for great things. Dreams can never be too big!
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| Sao beach |
After a year of hard work as a school teacher, the school management decided to go on an excursion, not
just any old excursion, but a journey to Phu Quoc Island; the enchanted place in
my childhood dreams which I saw on postcards my father kept and my university friend gave me. She's born and brought up in Kiên Giang Province. That was a green place with tree-lined dirt roads, delicious golden fish sauce farms and white-sand beaches.
As
teachers, we can’t afford to travel by plane, so we’re journeying to Phu Quoc by coach and ferry. While these modes of transport are cheaper, they are very time-consuming. It
is about 390 km from my school to the ferry embarkation point; it took a
lifetime to sit so still as the bus ground its way through traffic, villages, and multi-stops. However such delays and slowness did not dim my excitement or prevent us from having great
fun.
After all, I was off to Phu Quoc! I
stood ready at my school gate at 10 p.m. on 24 May 2013 peering down the road
for the bus, my heart beating and my legs shivering. I couldn't wait any longer for my first trip to an island in my native country.
We stopped at Rach Gia city at 5 a.m., and enjoyed breakfast in a pleasant eatery right alongside the sea; I
could smell the salt on the breeze. The sky became ominously grey before the sea wind picked up, blowing strongly. Luckily, this such weather was generally over in ten minutes and soon I saw a clear blue sky emerging.
However,
as luck would have it, as soon as we boarded the ferry to 'my' island, it began to rain again. We spent almost three hours on a ferry. We whiled away the time viewing
the sea and many islands that
litter the sea in the area. I
was accustomed to ferries in Scotland, and it was easy for me to stand
up from my seat or go to the top deck where it was hot and windy if I wanted to
view the sea.
After what seemed like
an interminable time; which I tried to pass as best as I could doing different
things like looking out of the window, watching some music videos and sleeping and sleeping again,
we reached Phu Quoc Island. The weather here was unpredictable, reminding
me of the weather in Scotland – all four seasons in a short time. It was pouring down as
we arrived, so we stayed calm on board, watching many bus drivers on the
landward side, who were waiting for their passengers in the rain. The rain kept
pouring down, so we eventually decided to be brave and disembark despite not
having raincoats. We all got soaked in a
flash, but unfortunately, our luggage didn’t. I was delighted to step
onto Phu Quoc Island. It had been a very long journey to get here. My colleagues and I stayed
there for two days and two nights; we discovered Pearl Island, which is
nearly as big as Singapore.
Day 1:
After checking into a cosy guesthouse,
we walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Believe it or not! It was raining
again! The restaurant was so busy we all aged while waiting to be served. More
seriously, we lost our lunch appetite while waiting for the second dish, and they run out of rice – so it was either dinner or back to our lodgings. For
the sake of refueling, we filled
our stomachs with food, rather than making lunch an occasion for socializing and
enjoyment. Thereafter we went back
to the guesthouse by bus. We changed into dry clothes and readied to
visit other tourist attractions on the southern island.
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Checking-in at our cosy guesthouse.
I wore yellow clothes and accidentially the guesthouse welcomed me in yellow too. Yellow used to be my favorite colour. I was so obsessed with yellow that whenever I saw yellow clothing I would buy it on the whim. I even had some tailored blazer and trousers in yellow. |
En route, we stopped at a pepper farm for 30 minutes. I posed for pictures at the
shop, as we do with our mobiles, and bought black peppercorns for my mum back home. No peppercorns in other plantations in Vietnam are as tasty as those in Phu Quoc Island. The peppers are
apparently very good quality so I look forward to using them in dishes I shall
prepare. The aromatic smell is addictive and unique; I smelt it again and
again.
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The pepper vines are winding around the cement poles.
The pepper plantation is full of puddles after some showers of rain. |
I was terribly excited
to be going to the next destination, Tranh Waterfall. Sadly, my joyous expectation
was dashed by human behavior. The ticket seller was obnoxious. He was annoyed when
we wanted to buy tickets individually. He wanted to sell tickets for a group so
that he didn’t have to give change to each visitor. He even began quarrelling
with one of my colleagues who also hoped to see the waterfall, but also could
not enter. After this awkward
incident, we left Tranh Waterfall immediately, feeling let down by the poor
service there. The colleague, who got angry
with the ticket seller, said that the waterfall was probably not breathtaking
at that time of year in any case, because of the limited capacity of water at the
beginning of the rainy season. Therefore, I did not regret not seeing the
gorgeous waterfall with my own eyes.
Our next destination was Ham Ninh fishing village. There were not many fun things
to do here. However, we enjoyed some drinks which were considered healthy and fresh, such
as sugar cane juice and water coconut juice. We strolled along the port where fishermen hurriedly transported fish and squids on
their rustic motorcycles. We had a closer look at live seafood at the open-air food stalls. It felt like we were in an aquarium in Nha Trang City, but this aquarium brought real life and colours, not the man-made boring ubiquity that we would find in any city.
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| Peaceful Hàm Ninh village |
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| Hàm Ninh village |
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| Live seahorses in a fish tank with oxygen pumps. There is no flesh in them, but they are rare and expensive due to the demand for medical use. |
We returned to the
guesthouse and had a lovely walk along the beach. We watched the strong waves
behind Dinh Cau night market crashing into the beach studded with rocks of all size and shape but still friendly enough for beachgoers. I did not go to dip my feet in the beach as the
sun had already set. I went window shopping, instead; seeing only heaps of
cheap bric-a-brac. Afterwards I took a late dinner with my colleagues. Again,
we had to wait long to be served and were tired by the waitress who brought
us a dish
that we had not ordered. We were too starving to wait for our ordered food, so
we simply wolfed the dishes as they came. Phu Quoc Island was not building a great reputation for quality or speed of service when it was flooded with tourists in peak season!
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Dried fish in Hàm Ninh village
Dried fish is one of the staple foods in Vietnam. The vietnamese can dry fish of any shape and size for future use. Of course, dried fish is very salty, but it is perfect to pair with plain rice and vegetable soup. |
Day 2:
The next day in Phu
Quoc was more relaxing and enjoyable than the first one. I was taken to a rose
myrtle wine factory where visitors could taste rose myrtle wine. What I liked
here was walking through the rose myrtle farm behind the showroom; the purple
flowers were a magnificent sight. The flowers and their
purple colour reminded me of a famous, but sad, romantic song that is popular with
my parents’ generation. It saddened me to think about them.
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| An appealing display of pearl shells at the pearl shop |
From the pearl shop, I
hopped on the bus again to visit a prison camp for Vietnamese POWs. A friend of
mine was right when he chose not to go to this camp on his vacation. The scenes
depicted made me feel sick. I was sure I would have nightmares about these
barbarisms. I do not understand why people treat other human beings in such
ways.
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| Layers of razor wire fences surrounded the prison camp |
On the last leg of the trip, we went to visit one fish sauce 'estate' among hundreds of them on the island. A trip to Phú Quốc Island won't complete without a tour to a fish sauce 'estate'! We were amazed to witness the process of how fish sauce is made. Each pure salty drop of fish sauce is a product of labour and time and skills that are passed on from generation to generation. I did not buy any fish sauce although I consume fish sauce in every dish every day. It is not portable to carry.
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| Huge tanks are used to ferment fish sauce |
Luckily, the next
tourist attraction, Bai Sao beach, abated my dismay and fearfulness. The beach
was serenely beautiful. Unlike the beach
next to my guesthouse, Bai Sao beach has tiny waves, like a gentle ripple on a
pond. The gentle wave caressed the white sand and tickled my bare feet. There are many
watersports offered here and mostly used by foreigners. I did not go swimming at this beach because it was
boiling after midday. Only the foreigners seemed to enjoy sunbathing in the
midday heat. They were lying down on the beach getting a suntan. I walked along the
beach—pristine and eemingly unpeopled— and took some splendid photos. It felt that the beach belonged
all to me. The others in my group did not take the walk as I did, so they did
not discover the natural beauty of Bai Sao beach as you can see in the pictures
I’ve attached.
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| Charming coconut trees admire their reflection in the white-sand mirror |
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| The water is so crystal clear you can watch tiny fish dancing |
Although I did not have a swim at Bai Sao beach, I rode the waves at the beach near my guesthouse for nearly an hour. I enjoyed a late afternoon swim with two girls in their early twenties with joy until twilight. I accidentally swallowed sea water when I attempted to learn how to swim by myself. The most relaxing thing for me was standing in the sea and jumping up when the waves came towards me, hugging me, elavating me with their 'tight squeeze' and singing to me.
After about 30 minutes
of being lashed by the wave—as cool as cucumber taken out from the fridge, we walked back to the guesthouse, dressed up and then ate dinner in
Dinh Cậu night market. This time we went to a different food stall to try new
tastes. Once bitten, twice shy! The first night’s joint would not see us again!
The next morning, I got
up early to pack my luggage before hopping on the coach to head home. Saying
goodbye to the pearl island, I promised myself that I would go back someday to enjoy fresh seafood and swim in the white-sand beach again.
HNM
