R&R on Pho Quoc Island

 So we headed to Quoc Island for a bit of Rest and Relaxation over the weekend.  After having breakfast and getting everyone to move all their belonging into our room while we are gone from Rach Gia, we jumped in our taxis and headed for the pier around 7:15am.

Once there, we boarded the Savanna fast ferry...2.5 hour trip across to the island.  The journey across was pretty non eventful, however we did have quite the laugh watching a Japanese movie...while including our own subtitles...and then having Vietnamese voice overs.  At first some of us thought it was someone on the boat making an announcement because it was the same voice for all the characters, but them realized what was going on when it kept going on for quite a while...dumb Canadians.

 The ferry was jam packed and different from what I'm used to, as everyone had assigned seats and most people sat or slept most of the time.  Parts of the sail were pretty choppy so we had some rocking and rolling going on at some points.  We arrived in Pho Quoc at about 10:45am, disembarked and met our hotel pick up.  Pho  Quoc is only about 45km long and tourism has just started to pick up in the last 10 years, so it's in a bit of a transition stage.  They are building new highways...the 30 minute drive to our hotel was pretty bumpy...and hotels are starting to spring up all over the place.

We arrived at our hotel the Huong Bien Hotel  at about 11:30am, had lunch upstairs on the roof top restaurant...in the sun as good Canadians do...then some of us headed to the beach, while the others went touring around.  I decided to sit on the beach for the afternoon and relax with Matt, Savina and Liz.  The beach is small, but clean by our hotel and the water was so nice and refreshing.  Although the sun was not out, it was kind of nice since it would have been scorching hot if it had been...there was also a fairly steady breeze all afternoon that felt so good.




Mid afternoon we went for a walk up the beach to take some photos, but there really wasn't a lot to see.  We came back and relaxed for a bit longer before heading up to check into our rooms.  But not before I flashed the locals when my bathing suit hook broke...good lord, this would only happen to me.  No wonder the guy up on the edge of the beach asked me twice if I wanted a massage after that...definitely no pictures of that episode!!!

Hopped in the shower, freshened up and headed back out to the beach to try and catch a bit of the sun set.  Not overly great, as it has been very hazy and the sun was not as vibrant as I had hoped.  At 6:15pm we all met up and headed out for dinner.  Jennifer thought she saw an Indian restaurant when she was on her way to the pearl factory, so we thought we'd walk up the road to see if we could find it.  By this time it was dark out and there were lots of motorbikes and vehicles around, so we needed to be a bit careful walking on the side of the road.  We walked for about 20 minutes and didn't see the restaurant, so decided to turn around and find another spot.  We ended up walking all the way back to where we started without deciding on a place to eat, so what do you think we did???....we walked back up the road another 20 minutes to a little place called the Cafe Vespa.  Great little spot where Happy Hour was on...2 for 1 Mojitos...and we were also able to order some curry dishes here as well.  We had a great meal, lots of laughs, and Matt especially loved the background music... "I'm All Out of Love" by AirSupply playing repeatedly at least 10 times before we left.  What we found out as we were leaving our restaurant is that the Indian place we were looking for was about 30 feet up the road on the opposite side of the street...just our luck.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and took in some of the Night Market that was set up right beside our hotel.  This market runs until 11pm each night and is packed with fresh fish and seafood...stuff I've never even seen before...lots of people socializing and having a great meal, as well as lots of vendors along the way.  We took a look, bought a few things, bought some ice cream and then headed back to the hotel around 10pm...once again exhausted, but this time from maybe a bit too much sun and a few too many delicious beverages.

 As expected, this has been another great day...this time relaxing and enjoying some free time. Now it's time for a good night's sleep...rooming with Lise tonight... with no alarm clock and another half day tomorrow to check out some more of the town..

Until then...
Lisa