South America...I mean, Phu Quoc Island

The beauty of having no set itinerary and the willingness to be flexible has allowed us to find small towns to visit and plan for it just a couple days in advance.  And that is exactly what happened in Vietnam.  The usual cities to visit are of course Saigon and Hanoi and then thrown into the mix are either Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, Sa Pa, and/or Ha Long Bay.  But a place that hasn't hit the mainstream yet is a little island off the East coast of Southern Vietnam called Phu Quoc.  This little island, which is just south of Cambodia and has territorial disputes w/ Cambodia, is shaped kinda like South America and is slated to become a tourist destination...but not yet.  Plans for large resorts to be built haven't taken off yet.  So we decide to book a plane and book a resort and off we went.

Our resort has individual bungalows in a little garden that steps off onto the beach.  There are maybe a dozen resort on this beach, with each resort claiming the beach area right in front of their property.  While the sand was a little coarse and grainy (nothing close to the powder white sand that we experienced at Boracay), it was a perfect area and Darin and I were glad to have been back on the beach after a month of touring North East Asia.

Our Garden Resort, Thanh Kieu Resort

Our Resort's Private Beach

Since Phu Quoc Island doesn't have the massive amounts of people that Saigon had and that the island seemed fairly small, we decided to rent two motorbikes (at 120,000 dong or ~6 USD a piece) and tour the little island.  Having only one previous experience driving a motorbike, I was a bit excited and apprehensive at the same time.  It was wise of me to be apprehensive, since I almost crashed the bike after going only 20m.  With a little scrape on my shin and a tip from Darin, we were off again.    And after an hour, when I wasn't gripping on to dear life, I was able to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery and feel the wind blowing through my helmet covered "beautiful hair" (the guy we rented the motorbike from apologized for having to wear a helmet and ruin my "beautiful hair").

In Phu Quoc Island, you can either stay within the city, at the beach near the city, or at the beach on the South East beach called Sao Beach.  This is the beach that the travel guide books says is more beautiful and contains only 3 resorts.  The down side is that since there isn't much else on this side of the island, you don't have much else to do except use the resort facilities and lay on the beach.  But with our rented motorbikes, we were able to visit this side of the island and get to enjoy the crystal blue waters and powder fine sand.  It's like Boracay again with a fraction of the people & resorts.

After an hour or two at Sao Beach, we jump on our motorbikes and head back to our resort.  This time, we travel along the west side of the island.  This road travels along the coast for ~12km and was the uber-highlight of our motorbike trip for the day.  This beach, known as Long Beach (but much nicer than the one in Southern California), is where the mega resorts are supposed to be built.  So perhaps one day, we can return when they're built and say, "I remember when..."