Overall with the Phu Quoc Island destination, it is definitely a tourist hot spot with many Russians, Polish and Czech Repulics visiting thus it is an expensive place to visit, as food prices in restaurants, food prices on street carts and accommodations are all very inflated, thus some consider it a ’scam city’. Also much litter and garbage everywhere, on the streets, beaches and on the waters. Much construction going on everywhere with new restaurants, hotels and hostels and this is taking away much beauty of the beaches, along with access to beaches. Lastly, the Hotels are claiming ownership of the beach fronts which they have absolutely no authority to do so, but all hotels seem to want the beach fronts for their paying guests only and thus will claim ownership and not allow other sun seekers tanning on parts of beaches, thus not many areas to sun tan on these beautiful beaches, personally I have stood my ground and stayed put on the beach ignoring their bullshit commands to move, but I have balls and if you wish also to challenge these bullshit commands expect to be harassed, intimidated, threatened, discriminated, and physically assaulted, now I complained to management of these Hotels as to what just happened with these criminal charges I have just pointed out, they fall upon deaf ears, nothing will be done about it because the managers and owners of these Hotels know that they can do whatever they wish to sun seekers or Hotel guests and get away with it because police in Vietnam will not react, or investigate. So keep this in mind, one can be physically assaulted, raped, threatened, bullied, discriminated, intimidated, harassed and so on and not much will be done, if one wishes to complain one just may get more of these criminal acts to continue and even escalate, so do you really want to visit this Island….?

The one Hotel/Resort that is shameful and disgraceful in this conduct of intimidating, assaulting, discriminating and threatening the beach goers or those wanting to simply lay on the beach and suntan is called ‘La Veranda’ the staff at this resort is very rude and aggressive with physical violence, I recommend staying away from this resort on the beach.

I arrived at Phu Quoc from a short 3 day stay at Hanoi which turned out to be an expensive 3 day stay. Now here on the island I plan on saving much money once again and spending much time on beach soaking up the sunshine to get a nice dark tan. Its funny with the Vietnamese women during the day they have all of their body covered in clothing to protect against tanning with the sun shinning upon them. Its ok for the men to get dark but not the women and the women want pale or white skin this is very desirable to them and then you have the white travellers and tourists from North America and European countries soaking up the sun on beaches to get dark skin, no one happy with what they have.

Now I got a motorbike for an afternoon and rode up island in the north direction, I was told about 40 minutes away but I did make a few stops to capture many interesting shots with camera. At on corner of the north island one can see many fishing boats in the Gulf of Thailand and off in the distance Cambodia which was cool to see how close Cambodia was, this point was called Ganh Dau. Now this area called Ganh Dau is supposedly the best region for beaches; Mui Ganh Dau Beach is one of them. As I continued riding eastward I passed the entrance to one of the best hiking and trekking trails on the island called ‘Ganh Dau trail’  I ended up at a place called Rach Vem which is a peaceful fishing village where which has many wooden bridges leading a long ways out to many floating restaurants and again many fishing boats making for a great photo opportunity.

Instead of continuing eastward making a long journey around the outside of the entire island, or heading straight down the centre of the island, I went back in the direction I came and stopped at a coffee shop for a delicious Vietnamese coffee that cost me only 10K and it was the most delicious, who says expensive is better. I then stopped at one of these roadside fruit stands and bought water melon, mangoes, apples, red grapes, and bananas all for 120K, when I got back to where I am staying which is a Hostel called ‘Antinho Hostel’ the owner asked me how much I paid for all this fruit, I told her 120 thousand, she questioned me, “Are you sure?” apparently she told me it should have costed about 160 thousand, so I guess I got another great deal being in the northern part of the island.

I have done much walking along the streets and around the area especially towards the night market area, there was a lighthouse that sat on top of rocks that I visited called ‘Dinh Cau Temple’  apparently it is a small shrine to the goddess of the sea, with a blue-&-white striped lighthouse & harbour views, when I was there a viewed a couple of monks standing on the rocks in their brightly orange coloured robes taking photos of one another, to me this was just too funny. This combination temple and lighthouse was built in 1937 to honour Thien Hau, the Goddess of the Sea, who provides protection for sailors and fishers. Sometimes called a ‘castle’, Dinh Cau gives you a good view of the harbour entrance and the promenade is popular with locals taking a stroll at sunset.

There is a Night Market every night from about 6pm – midnight I have been told, many seafood restaurants serving very fresh seafood of all sorts as the fish are alive in tanks, when I write fish, I mean sea snakes, frogs, squid, octopus, shark, shell fish and other very interesting sea life, as it appears to be the place to eat seafoods. I bought a kg of cashews one night for 400K which apparently is a good deal worked out to be $22.5.kg CAD. I have been walking up and down the beach, very picturesque views and tropical views also, the Vietnamese ladies fully clothed on the hot sandy beach wearing their ‘Conical Hat’ and carry two baskets of goods to sell hanging from each side of a bamboo pole across their shoulders is authentic Vietnamese traditional appearance, and then in the same picture you have a half naked beautiful tanned bikini body with full view of an entire round ass, because I guess she is wearing the authentic string bikini from Europe or North America, two very different cultures here on this beach, called “Long Beach’, now I have been told if you want white sandy beaches head south from here, and I am somewhat in the middle of the island along the west coast, not far from airport.

Today being Halloween in Phu Quoc I took a walk in the opposite direction of the usual way of heading towards the Night Market as this seems to be where all the action is, but I wanted to find out what was in the other direction and not much, but I did see another section of the beach, saw children exercising as a whole group outside in front of their school all in their uniforms and I did stop into a South Indian restaurant called ‘The Naked Table’ and ate something new called sambar, which had potatoes and cauliflower in it and very filling because of the portion size. The owner/chef was very friendly as he was wearing a chef shirt which had the restaurant logo on it, ‘The Naked Table’ and ‘love all, feed all’, I liked the shirt and asked if he had one for sale as I wished to buy one, but he explained that he had none for sale and he had only two, the one he was wearing and another that was dirty needing to be cleaned. I said to him too bad as I like it, he pondered for a moment and told me he is going to give me the one that he is having cleaned to me, what a very kind, thoughtful and generous man. I appreciated what he did so after I finished my meal I told him I write a travel blog and I am going to mention his generosity and restaurant, so here it is boys and girls. Suresh being the cook/owner of The Naked Table restaurant is a very friendly kind brother cooking up some very fine delicious meals, I recommend stopping in to meet him and enjoying a tasty meal at The Naked Table. He knows about giving and helping others is very good Karma, and as a result of me asking for a shirt, he has gone and ordered more for the staff and for sale, so perhaps after a delicious meal, think about buying a souvenir shirt from The Naked Table at Phu Quoc, Vietnam.

I then walked towards the directions of the night market to buy more cashews, and walked by a hawker cart were a lady was frying up bananas and sweet potatoes so since I like street food I bought a couple of pieces and it cost 20K and I thought I gave her a 20k note, as I was about to walk away with food in hand but she stopped me giving me back so much money that I was not expecting, as she explained I gave her a 200K bill, again much honesty with most of the Vietnamese people.

I am finding out that many of the beach areas for laying in the sun are just for the guests staying at the Hotels thus hotel employees are telling travellers and tourists that wish to lay in the sun on the beach to keep moving because it is a private beach, and because so many hotels are located on the beach front not many areas at all to lay on the beach to relax and suntan. This is very good and fortunate for tourists staying at these luxury hotels on the beachfront, but for travellers especially backpackers looking for ways to travel cheap and cannot afford these expensive hotels seems that they do not get the privilege of suntanning on the beach.

Walking around asking for prices for services one would think that the Vietnamese people here in Phu Quoc have much higher wages than the rest of Vietnam, especially compared to Danang where services were very reasonable and affordable, but here in Phu Quoc as in the central part of Hanoi being the Old Quarters where many tourists come to, the services are very high which means the Vietnamese people have no problem taking advantage of gouging such tourists out of so much money, but I suppose one cannot blame the Vietnamese, because I am sure the Vietnamese response would be that the tourists are happy paying high prices because we have no lack of paying customers, for example in Hanoi outside of the Old Quarters as in Danang getting a head and face shave cost 30K, in the Old Quarters the same shave costs 200k and here in Phu Quoc 100K, I walked into a hardware store to have the rubber insole glued down on one sandal, the bottle of Crazy Glue had price of 15K, the lady put a few squirts of glue on the rubber insole and charged me 10K, thus 1000 for the glue and 9000 for her 1 minute of labour which would work out to 540K per hour, but no Vietnamese would agree that anyone makes that kind of wage here, thus stealing money from the tourists and as much as they can. Hell I should have just bought that bottle of glue myself and went into business of repairing shoes and that one bottle of glue would have generated a profit of at least 200K, for 20 minutes of work. Well I cannot afford to get my head and face shaved here in Phu Quoc so I will do it myself, as far as sandal repair work, next time I will just buy the bottle of Crazy Glue and do the work myself.

Well again by motorbike I headed south to venture to this must see and visit white sandy beach called ‘Sao Beach’ I was not impressed at all, it is a much narrower beach, meaning between water’s edge and start of beach not much beach, it was an overcast day and windy, thus waves were bigger than Long Beach and yes sand was white, but I prefer Long Beach, the view is much better, more beach area and has a more comfortable feel to me. I also went to this War Monument which was just a very big monument, that’s it. Across the street and a bit north is an old prison, I believe its called ‘Coconut Prison’ when you walk through the barracks where the prisoners were detained, not a pleasant site and the information provided as how the prisoners were treated, as expected very degrading, appalling and disgraceful, even today prisoners treated the same, man is too ignorant and arrogant to learn. I also went to a fishing village that had many floating restaurants and I noticed 20 or 30 very small Sea Horses drying out in sun on a silver platter, again shameful raping the oceans of sea life and always causing extinction to life, animal life, sea life, plant life, soon and no doubt in my mind because man is a species of low intelligence and the most ignorant and arrogant species on Earth, man too will become extinct, which needs to happen because if he is not smart enough to learn and change habits now, man will never change as he is so jealous of all the other superior beings compared to himself he kills them into extinction. Lastly for this one day venture I went to a Pepper farm, saw peppers growing on tall bushes and ate some right from the bush, the smallest green balls with an explosive hot hit that lasts for a good 20 seconds, very potent. I ended up buying a bag of both black and white pepper corns to take with me to Ecuador. It appears many Pepper farms on this Island and unfortunately not something that is advertised or written about in the tourists pamphlets, is the amount of garbage strewn all over the island and in piles also, everywhere I travelled by motorbike, north, central, south and along the main drag, now this surprises me the most, the main roadway to get from airport to night market where all the hotels and restaurants are for the tourists garbage and litter everywhere, litter strewn all up and down each side of main artery and garbage piles and hearings on empty lots and in front of businesses and sometimes the smell of garbage rotting is present, now for a popular tourist destination resort, garbage and litter everywhere, I don’t understand, this is what the tourists like and want, along with the expensive over inflated prices, again I just don’t get it.

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