Day 8 – To a tropical island

Today we were hoping to go from ‘adventure-tourist’ to ‘tropical island tourist’ mode – with flights from Danang in central Vietnam to Phu Quoc island off its southern tip. It's supposed to be one of the ‘hidden wonders’ of Vietnam.

Was almost sick again on the trip to the airport (maybe another bad meal the night before?), but managed to come right again before boarding (it was very touch and go for a while).

After a 3 hour stopover in Ho Chi Ming City, we made it to the island where I had heard that “if you were really keen” you could walk from the airport to the beach and then along the beach – sampling the resorts as you go. Sounded more exciting than using a taxi, a bit of an adventure – so we ignored all the taxi touts wanting to take us to their recommended resort and off we went on our own.

Well... our naive keenness just about killed us! It was stinking hot and after an hour or so of walking with our backpacks on and still not getting to the beach, we finally gave up and asked a taxi to take us to the nearest resort where we checked in without question – just as the rain started. It was a cheap bungalow and had a pool - nothing else really mattered by that stage.



There was a reason for the cheapness – with a dark, damp and smelly room and almost foot long geckos on the walls running to hide behind the bed when you entered the room. They supplied a mosquito net, as none of the doors or windows closed properly. There was one very very dim light – so you could hardly see anything once the sun was down. The bed had a broken spring that kept Delwyn awake, the air-con smelled like stagnant water, and the frogs outside were like jackhammers. It was raining and windy, everything was wet and slippery, and the beach was covered with rubbish – the waves were choppy and murky. The restaurant at the resort was the only food choice and was twice the price we had been used to paying – yet eating was about all there was to do in that weather.


Sufficed to say it wasn’t the tropical paradise we were expecting – and had the obligatory ‘home-sick-meltdown’ moment later that dark stormy night when the strange noises (probably the rats) outside (or maybe inside - we never did find out) the bungalow caused Delwyn to loose it...

You don’t know what a comfort zone really is – until it’s not there anymore...