Phu Quoc - Island Paradise

The Super Dong turns out to be far less impressive than the last Super Dong I encountered, but maybe that’s just my memory playing tricks with me. Anyway, this one did the job (as did the last one, I think), and before we know it, we’re dragging our bags off the boat, into heat and…brilliant sunshine. At last!

We’ve pre-booked 2 adjoining bungalows at Cassia Cottage www.cassiacottage.com, right on the west-facing beach and we’ve made a excellent choice. A gorgeous view, a great stretch of beach, a lovely pool and even WiFi in our rooms, which is always handy for booking up accommodation at our next location.

Pho Quoc is Vietnam’s largest island and is home to some 80,000 people. I say it’s Vietnam’s island, but actually, if you look at a map, you’ll see that it looks much more as though it belongs to Cambodia. The Vietnamese border comes down in a pretty straight line then takes a wild swerve out to the left to include Phu Quoc…but that’s another history lesson.

We take a long walk up the beautiful stretch of beach and discover a clutch of beach bungalows, one swanky French-colonial looking boutique hotel (Verandah), one bar (Eden) and one beach-shack restaurant. Perfect. The water is calm and clear, the sky is blue and even the palm trees are bending out across the beach at the perfect angle for scenic photo shoots. We already liked it here before we discovered that a very good one hour massage on the beach costs $3. Bliss. The memory of all that rain soon becomes a distant one.

The shack is rather unimaginatively called The Palm Tree but their fresh seafood BBQ scores much higher. The freshest fish, huge prawns and squid, straight out of the sea, onto the BBQ and onto your plate. It’s run by a gorgeous guy called Anh Tú who has been living here, literally in a bamboo shack on the beach, for the last 10 years and we book onto his boat trip for the next day. We stop for some fishing where I hook a tiddler, but you should have seen the one that got away… several stops for snorkelling and then a stop at a true Robinson Crusoe beach; a tiny stretch of pure white sand covered in shells and broken bits of coral, surrounded by palm trees and only accessible by boat. Homeward bound, we stop off at Soi Beach in the Southeast where the waves are wild and the sand is white and the drive home, as the sun is setting over the ocean, along the longest stretch of straight coastal road pretty much wraps up a perfect day.

We took a trip north to investigate the jungle which covers much of this island and a short uphill hike takes us to a waterfall and a pool big enough for a dip. Stopping off at Mango Bay for lunch, we discover another gorgeous little beach and some great bungalows scattered around in the gardens. Definitely the place to stay if you want to get away from it all.

We loved it here and all said we’d love to come back. I hope it doesn’t become the next Koh Samui and change beyond recognition in the next few years.