December 25 Phu Quoc Around The Town

Steve: Well, here we are on Phu Quoc island. It's a pretty big sucker out in the Gulf of Thailand, only 3-4 kilometres from Cambodia but a 1.5 hour fast-ferry ride from Viet Nam. Sensible people, including the Cambodians, would deduce that it should belong to Cambodia. Other people, including the Vietnamese and their very large army base, beg to differ. The northeast quarter of the island is a military reserve and there are lots of olive-drab helicopters flying around. Since these disagreements are generally settled in favor of the person with the largest army I am going with the Vietnamese...

But for us foreigners that's all pretty invisible. We have the other 3/4 of the island to ourselves and it's pretty nice. Deb and I are on the western side of the island which is the good side during the dry season, in a little town called Duong Dong. It's a perfectly OK little town of maybe 5,000 people centered around the local commercial fishing fleet. Us tourists don't use the town that much other than a few restaurants and the Night Market (more on that later), we're centered on a 5 km strip of road and beach south of town that probably contains 50-100 hotels and restaurants. There are a surprising number of Russian tourists here, probably 50% (more by volume, they're big boogers) and they are of course their usual cheerful and outgoing selves (not). All of the menus are trilingual, which in practice means they are equally incoherent in all three languages. Not that that matters as no matter what you order, no matter how many times you repeat it, no matter how much you tapdance and wave your arms, something else generally shows up. But it's all good, so that's just part of the adventure! Who knew that beef noodle soup and a beer made a wholesome and nutritious breakfast? We managed to nail down six or so pretty good restaurants (east indian, german bakery, schnitzel/pizza, french breakfast place, and a couple of uptown-ish viet cuisine) and after that life was pretty good. It's hard to spend more than $30/day on food and drinks combined here, breakfast and lunch are generally ca. $3-4/plate, dinner is $4-6, and beer is $0.50-$0.75. There are only a few minor disappointments; whoever taught these people to make coffee should be taken out and shot, and it's difficult but not impossible to get a decent bottle of wine for a decent price. Life is hard. Then you die.

Deb: Ok, Phu Quoc (Foo Awk) is one of those vacation islands that is rapidly becoming a mecca for all kinds of countries. Particularly the Russians. The locals hate them, “they have big noses, angry eyes, and are loud and demanding, they don’t smile & don’t want to have conversation with you”..a quote from a local. They are liked about as much as the Mexicans like the French Canadians. There are lots of Europeans here and lots with their little children, which surprises me, but maybe this is their only destination. Lots of Aussies (half of Melbourne is here, I think) & New Zealanders.

Here is some local fauna:

Rory's Beach Bar.  Australian spoken here.

           

The beach below our hotel, looking north.

The "I love phu quoc" restaurant, one of our favourites.

Steve: Our first hotel turned out to be a bust. Nice place, but the people running it were unfriendly and couldn't organize a pissup in a brewery. So we went hotel-shopping, and as usual Deb found us a little jewel for an excellent price. We are in a semi-detached bungalow, absolutely brand new, big, sparkling clean, right beside a great pool, for $40/night. A bit pricy for us, but we've decided to decompress here until New Years Day before heading over to HCMC. There's only one drawback; like the previous three hotels we've stayed in this place has super-firm mattresses. You know that commercial where they bounce the bowling ball on the bed and the bowling pins on the other side don't fall? Well, if you bounced a bowling ball on these beds the ball would break. I am determined to get used to them, but Debbi's back is getting completely boogered, so after a couple days I decided to do something about it. I got a tip that I could buy a mattress topper at the local market, which is across a bridge in the very-not-touristy part of town. No problem, I'll taxi there and back and everything will be good. When we arrived at the bridge the taxi pulled over and the driver indicated that I was to get out and walk across, turns out that taxis aren't allowed to cross the bridge. I have a number of theories for why that is, but nobody cares. So off I went on foot across the bridge, which is under construction of course. They are just putting in the sidewalks, which means you can't use them, which means walking in the traffic lanes with the traffic. But it's all good as these folks are used to dealing with this kind of disruption. To make a long story short I didn't find the mattress pad I was looking for, but I did find the REAL market. It's absolutely seething, sells everything, and the motorcycles just pull up to the stalls like a Timmies drive-through. After you get your foot run over a couple times and get yelled at by some lady for standing in front of her stall and not buying anything it all starts to make sense.

 The REAL market.

 

Drive-through meat stall.
 

Deb: We went to the day market and what a zoo. Picture this: the street is about 50’ wide, with stalls on each side, leaving about 12’ to walk..that is if you can walk for all the motor bikes.. approx. 200, which have the right of way. The stalls are all pretty much, drive up windows...now add about 500 people, 30+C and there’s your zoo. Oh, I can’t forget the umbrellas that are up and all points are eye level. Even with all the chaos, I did manage a good photo or two.

 

Steve: The Night Market, on the other hand, IS a tourist place. Motorcycles are banned, the lane is wide and there are no low umbrellas waiting to stab you in the eyeball, everything is organized, and the prices are double what you pay anywhere else. Having said that, the front half is all seafood restaurants featuring live things in tanks, and they have everything that swims, sinks, lurks, croaks, or hisses. You gotta see it. When you buy something out of the tank they just heave it onto the grill, conveniently leaving out the part where you're supposed to kill it first. There's a thing called a mantis shrimp that looks 25% prawn, 25% lobster, and 50% alien space monster. It still gives me the willies when I think about it. As usual, there's another way. We found a convenient little alley that leads down 100 feet to a walkway on the beach where the locals eat. The walkway is about 10 feet wide which appears to be the ideal width for a seaside restaurant complete with tables, chairs, and a kitchen while still leaving ample room for people to stroll through. They serve everything the night market does but it's cooked better and you get to watch the kids swimming and the lights of the squid fishing fleet just offshore. It was good.

The Night Market

Hmmmn... Which unsuspecting arthropod will we immolate tonight?
 

The scallops got it.

I was particularly interested in what snake tasted like so I asked the fellow. He said it was much like chicken; when I asked about bones, he said they are very small & would be made softer by cooking, not to worry, no problem he said. But I had my eye on the frogs, so I had frog..2 of them. They were very good! The only problem was, for the next 2 days I was not far from a toilet.. especially anymore than 15 mins. Yes, those frogs had me hoppin. lol!

It was a dark and froggy night....

Steve: I can't say that Christmas is a non-event here, as they put up lots of lights and trees and things which definitely gives things a festive atmosphere. And people like to put on Santa hats, or elf hats, especially on their kids. But they don't seem to take it as seriously as we do, it's just a fun thing to do while waiting for Tet.

The view out our hotel window Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas from our Kitchen Elf.