Steve: We started this morning by driving south down the west side of the island, past miles and miles and miles of beautiful beach which I'm sure will be all developed in ten years but right now it's just empty with the occasional very rudimentary shack that the locals put up to use as their 'summer cottages'. Then we cut across the island and stopped off at another of the principal cash crops of the island, Nuoc Mam. The factory we went into was composed of perhaps twenty giant wooden barrels (5000 gallon?) that were full of rotting anchovies (they are the best kind for this). They rot for a while, then the juice is drained off and that's the really good stuff for salads and things. Then they top up the barrels with oil and let them cook for a while longer and drain them again, that's your fish sauce for cooking. Then they take the crud left in the barrels, which must be really something, and sell it to the pepper-farm guys as fertilizer. No anchovy gets left behind. Hong says that the factory we visited requires ten boats and one hundred fisherman working full-time to keep it at full production, and there are quite a few of these factories, so it's a great source of local employment.
Deb: The fish sauce, Nuoc Mam, was pretty interesting and very smelly. The best sauce is the stuff that takes 1 year to make & ends up being 43%. Once that is made, they take all the anchovies from that batch and put them through the press again, but the process is only 6 months and ends up only being 18%. This sauce is used for cooking only. The fellow who started this, started with just a ceramic vase full of anchovies & a board with a brick on top. The island joke according to Hong: ‘How many bottles of fish sauce can you take with you to Thailand?’ The answer is none. Why? Because the border guards take it from you because their fish sauce isn’t as good as Phu Quoc's...and then Hong laughed & laughed & laughed. (Thailand is also well known for its fish sauce).
These vats are full of anchovies that slowly *** and give up their essence.
Filtering.
The bottling plant.
This lady can sell anything.
Sippin fish goo.
Steve: Then we headed down to the southern tip of the island to check out the largest town and the main port. It's pretty typical of most third-world port cities, but quite a bit cleaner than usual. There's a big Catholic church here, Hong says that the south end of the island is Catholic and goes to the church here while the north end of the island is Buddhist and goes to the temples in the northern towns. Don't know whether that's an artifact of the recent wars or just a convenient arrangement over time.... We spent most of our time down on the dock in the harbour, where Hong explained that all Vietnamese ships are colour-coded; fishing boats are blue and/or green, tourist boats are white with blue and/or green trim, freighters are grey with blue and/or green trim, and navy boats are any bloody colour they want to be. OK, I made up the last one.
Now THAT'S a snail! Tiger snail, yum.
Reloading a trap to catch the pregnant lobsters.
This is a military training vessel.
This ship is literally loaded to the gunnels with fish goo.
By now we were all getting a bit peckish, so it was time to motor up the east side of the island and down a crappy little dirt road to a restaurant on an absolutely lovely beach where we could relax and relieve ourselves of the stresses of the morning.
Deb: This is where we met our young friend Hoang, whom we looked up in Ho Chi Min City when we got there. In the afternoon it gets quite windy as usual. My driver, Hong, who is just a little wisp of a thing, said he was glad I was on the back of the bike otherwise he would be blown off the road. These Vietnamese have no problem telling you are fat; as one Aussie put it,...they tell the Russians they are fat & have big guts all the time.
Now THAT'S a beach.
The view from our lunch table.
Who says plastic bags can't be scary? Looked like a man-eater to me...
Mid-afternoon again, and time to start working our way home. But on the way, Hong took us to 'the waterfalls' which has a ton of really interesting statues and gardens, and then there is a pretty significant walk up through the forest to a waterfall. We decided to give it a go, but it was pretty discouraging at first because there was NO WATER in the stream. After a while some started to show up, and by the time we got up a km or so there were some very nice pools which we proceeded to desecrate with our sweaty pink bodies.
This is a live tree, they just stuccoed the inside.
Canadians know how to deal with big lizards.
Never give up!
Tough slugging in sandals.
A rare glimpse of the elusive pink river dolphins.
Then it was back down to the bikes and time to head home for beers. Once we got back to town it was time to say our thank you's and goodbyes. My driver took off his sunglasses for the first time, and one of his eyes was completely walled over. I'd been riding with a blind guy! After a few seconds' reflection I realized that he'd done a bloody good job with what he had and it wasn't something to get excited about…
Deb: quite a good laugh about the deaf guy riding with the blind guy
The blind guy. He's in his 60's!
Deb: The rules of the road are that there are none. On the ‘freeway’/main road, there is a meridian that goes for miles without being able to cross it..so..if you're turning left at some point, you ride on that side of the road facing traffic until your turn comes. A little unnerving when you're riding down the middle of the damn lane and bikes & cars are passing on both sides of you going the other way. I asked about accidents: "yes there are some but mostly just crashes into each other, the real accidents are always fatal and they are always on the highway. Hmmm, aren’t we on the highway. No, this is just a short cut."
Here is your typical gas station. You may be out in the middle of no where, but no bike is without gas. Some stands will have 1 litre bottles or pop bottles, but everyone knows exactly how much gas they are getting and paying the right price.
A combined gas station and grocery store.
This guy is carrying a sheet of glass. Kids, don't try this at home.
Steve: This was our first set of tours in Vietnam so I don't have anything to compare it to, but Hong provided us with a first-class experience and very capable and humorous interpretation for $15/day/bike, which was $5 for gas and $10 for the driver, roughly double the average daily wage here. We paid them $20/day/bike, and everyone was very happy all round. I think the secret was in Deb finding someone that was reasonably fluent in English and who liked the work.
Deb: There were many things we didn’t do/see on this island, but I wasn’t isn’t going to see a Dog Farm, a Crocodile Farm where they raise them specifically for meat & purses/shoes etc and some more waterfalls (its the dry season) and another Pagoda, the Su Muong (Pagoda ‘d out & Wat’d out after Cambodia). We never did get to any of the islands snorkelling. Whenever there is is wind, its too rough for me to snorkel and its always windy. Give me the Vancouver Aquarium and I may snorkel.
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