Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting the next instalment – we’ve been busy doing nothing! Actually, a few days by the beach doesn’t really hold much of interest so we decided to roll-up the whole chunk into one journal.
We have a leisurely start on leaving Saigon as our flight to Phu Quoc does not leave until 12.10. Our last ride in the manic Saigon traffic and it does not disappoint. We would be nervous wrecks if we had to travel in this every day, London traffic is a breeze in comparison. The flight itself is only a fifty minute journey and we know it’s going to be a turboprop plane, but Linda’s still unaware how small the plane will be. Imagine the look on her face when we are bussed to the arse end of nowhere at the airport and she is faced with a very small plane – it’s nicely old school, good old-fashioned propellers, none of your fancy jet engines here. Linda is not the greatest fan of flying – particularly the start and end bits – and the prospect of travelling even the short distance to Phu Quoc on a plane that seats a maximum of 68 people (it’s not full) fills her with dread. I’m still trying to work out how the flight is commercially viable given that we’ve paid about £25 each for a ticket...
The journey is short and uneventful and we get a full view of the island of Phu Quoc as we bank to turn around to land. The island is only 30km long and 19km in width at its widest point, and is still fairly unspoilt (but getting busier with each season it appears). As we taxi off the runway it almost looks like the terminal will be in someone’s house – it’s not quite Stonetown in Zanzibar but not far off! The vehicles they use to unload the baggage are simply standard luggage trolleys that you get at all airports but there is at least a carousel for collecting your luggage – albeit only one, and pretty short at that.
We’re staying at Beach Club Vietnam for 6 days. We’ve changed our plans slightly in the past few days (we were planning to head back via the Mekong Delta, but after reviewing the trip we’d got booked we realised we wouldn’t get as much out of it as we initially expected so decided to cancel it and stay a couple more days on Phu Quoc, as, unfortunately, we’ve only got a single-entry visa for Vietnam so we can’t leave the country and we don’t have the time to travel further north). We can’t extend our stay at Beach Club as it’s fully booked but we’ll sort out the extra days later.
Beach club is a very laid back place – four bungalows and six rooms, all based around a central garden area with a nice bar/restaurant in the centre. It’s all right on the beach – the furthest room is maybe 10m from the sea. The vibe is good, the staff are friendly but not intrusive and we know we’re going to get on well here. A few years ago we stayed at a place called Moonhuts in Thailand and the setup was very similar, which is a good sign.
The next few days are a mixture of beach, chilling out, books, and scuba diving. We’ve booked a couple of days of diving on Phu Quoc, and I’ve also booked do my night diving speciality which involves another 3 dives and a lot of homework. Vietnam is described as Thailand 20 years ago, which is probably about right. Phu Quoc is described as Vietnam 10 years ago which I’m not sure about – a few years ago it may have been pretty quiet but it’s definitely getting busier, and there are some large hotel complexes on the main beach – long beach – on the island. Saying that, away from the beach there’s little development, but you kinda feel you’ve missed the boat by a couple of years on this one in terms of discovering something untouched. The capital Duong Dong really is a one street town, and it’s not much of a street at that. There’s very little to do there, most stuff revolves around the harbour and the slightly overrated night market. Even most of the independent restaurants are based out of town on the road down the back of long beach. Beach club is based more or less at the end of the developments on long beach so it actually is pretty quiet, and the food/beer is good and pretty cheap so we’re happy not to venture too far.
The diving is not too bad, but not great – but we’re in the gulf of Thailand so that’s not too surprising really. We do a couple of dives at sites to the north and a couple at sites to the south. The dives are all pretty shallow – maybe 12m maximum – and are mostly macro dives, looking for small stuff rather than the bigger pelagics. There’s a lot of coral (of varying quality), lots of nudibranch, plenty of small fish (and a few larger ones hiding away), a few crabs and that’s more or less it. Well, apart from the ever present urchins and the occasional bright anemone and accompanying clown fish. We do also see a crown of thorns starfish which is a nasty predator – it eats the coral and unless properly killed will multiply – ours is killed properly. The diving is not bad, but two days is about right to get an impression of the dive sites in both areas. Our dive leader is an instructor called Huang, who jointly runs the company. He’ll also be instructing me for my night dives. We’re accompanied by other divers on the two days: a German, Mattius, on the first day plus a Rainbow divemaster Thom, both of whom are very competent except in their ability to buddy up effectively. The second day we get a French diver, Alberto, who was less than competent – after a few occasions of getting hit by his fins we both learn to give him a wide berth!
The night dive spec. Involves 3 dives and a whole lot of homework beforehand. It’s all pretty interesting stuff, and fairly typical PADI it places great emphasis on safety first. The dives themselves vary from dive to dive. The first one is OK, but the vis is pretty awful – maybe a few metres at the start and end, but it drops to almost nothing in the middle, and this is quite disorientating at night. The first two dives are orientation dives to get used to diving at night and in the local conditions. The final dive will be a test of my underwater navigation at night – I have to lead the dive and return back to the dive boat. Neither of us do much navigation, we leave that to the locals who know the dive sites intimately, but I have little choice here. Regardless, I plan for a simple reciprocal route, I mean what can go wrong with that? Well, come the final dive, the water conditions have improved considerably, vis is really good and conditions are excellent. I head east – and plan to keep going that way until we return via a 180 turn. Unfortunately, 10 minutes in, I realise the local topology makes this impossible and we move away from my carefully planned route. Fortunately it doesn’t present too many problems, and after 40 minutes I signal to Huang that we’re heading back and within 10 minutes we’re back under the boat and I’m pretty stoked – navigation during the day is hard enough! We’ve still got decent air left so Huang decides to see if we can find some elusive bamboo sharks, and within 10 minutes we do so! It’s pretty cool, overall one of the best dives I’ve probably ever done.
The thing about diving on Phu Quoc is that you need to get a dive boat (and a good sized one at that) out to the dive sites, and for the night dives the boat was going out just for me. It makes you feel slightly special (and maybe a bit greedy) to know that you’ve got a full dive boat, two dive crew and three boat crew and they’re all making a trip of several hours just for you. Plus, conditions for the dives were not ideal – the first night we were diving in a thunder storm (lightning underwater looks cool) – and the crew have to suffer all this without the benefit of actually getting under the water! Still, it was all good fun and I’m glad I did it – more than likely we’ll be doing night dives down in southern Thailand, both off the Similans and off Koh Phi Phi.
Following the diving we spend the next few days chilling out. It’s much needed. Linda also takes advantage of the local women and has her leg hairs threaded, and has a massage. Even compared to Thailand the costs are very cheap. We’ve also sorted where to spend our final two days on Phu Quoc – the place next door, Paris Beach, comes well reviewed on Trip Advisor and is reasonable value so we sort a room out for a couple of days prior to our trip back to Saigon.
