John Borthwick enjoys the delights of an unspoilt Vietnamese
treasure before the developers move in.
Unspoiled charm ... Phu Quoc island, off
the south coast of Vietnam, offers the beauty of white-sand beaches
and tropical jungles, without the doof-doof music and booze bars of
the more popular coastal resorts.
Phu Quoc is the classic "before" model of
a tropical island. It's the kind of place you might be lucky
enough to find just before the forward scouts of "after" arrive:
the planners, scammers and ravers for whom paradise is never
enough. Shaped like a mini-South America, this 48-kilometre-long
island dangles 11 kilometres off the coast of Cambodia in the Gulf
of Thailand, although it belongs to Vietnam some 70 kilometres
away.
An hour's flight south of Ho Chi Minh
City (in an aircraft with disturbing signs that caution, "Do not
open door during flight") we land at Duong Dong, "capital" of Phu
Quoc. The sealed road stretches as far as our beachfront digs, Kim
Hoa Resort, about two kilometres south of town. After that it runs
out. And why not? The island has barely 90,000 residents, most of
them dwelling around Duong Dong, and annually hosts a modest 40,000
international visitors, although there's a Great Leap
Forward-style plan to triple that by 2010.
Along with the rest of Vietnam, the island
was occupied by the French from the mid-1800s and rubber and
coconut plantations were established. Colonial rule ended when the
Japanese invaded Vietnam during World War II, although the French
tried unsuccessfully to reclaim the country after Japan's
defeat.
From 1967 to 1972, during the war with the
United States, the Americans ran a prisoner of war camp near the
southern tip of the island, where up to 40,000 Vietcong and others
were held. The penal theme lingered for some years after Vietnam's
independence in 1975, when collaborators and the politically
incorrect were shunted off for re-education. Cambodia lays a
logical (but no-chance) claim to the island, given Phu Quoc's
proximity to their coast and its relative distance from Vietnam.
The Khmer Rouge once even briefly invaded in an attempt to annexe
it for Cambodia. These days, a hefty Vietnamese garrison ensures
there'll be no more stunts like that.
"Hello. Where are you from?" calls a young
man lolling in the clear tepid waters in front of the resort. "I'm
from Perth, myself," he says. Dan, a Vietnamese-Australian, tells
me he has come back here to market what sounds like "roperty".
Thinking he has said "rubber-tree", I take the conversation on an
unlikely tangent until he corrects me: "Not 'rubber-tree' -
'property'." Despite being divided by a common language, he
explains he's here to ride the wave of Phu Quoc property
development, adding that foreigners can now even obtain 40-year
land leases here. Kindly, he doesn't try to sell me one.
I opt for a sunset clause and stroll along
the aptly named Bai Truong (Long Beach) that stretches for 20?km to
the southern end of the island. Beach massage ladies offer willing
hands for 40,000 dong ($3.50) an hour. "Tomorrow," I promise.
Fishing boats with nets draped between long, mantis-like booms head
home beneath the westering sun.
On the west coast, we hire motorcycles
(for about $8 a day) to explore the coast to the south. An aisle of
unsealed red road runs parallel to brilliant green verges that give
way to an empty beach and an almost powder-blue sea. Cattle graze
below a line of she-oaks while fishermen haul in their nets on
wooden windlass reels. The dress code for the rural women we pass
is floral pyjama party plus conical hat; for men it is T-shirt,
jeans and a motorcycle.
At 596 square kilometres, about the size
of Singapore, Phu Quoc is Vietnam's largest island and is known as
"the isle of 99 mountains" because of its high sandstone ridges.
Plantations of black pepper trees dominate the flatlands.
We light incense at a little forest temple
then turn east to the island's most celebrated beach, Bai Sao, a
kilometre-long scoop of pale sand and pellucid water cupped by
jungle ridges. If "celebrated" means one restaurant, a hammock,
three foreigners, five Vietnamese and a few kids, then Bai Sao is
far from being spoiled by success. Our lunch is grilled fish
marinated in a hot sauce, followed by more fish in a clay pot, plus
coi chom chom, sea snails grilled in chilli salt. Throw in a few
drinks, rice and tips, and a three-course lunch for two costs us
$12.
"It's like Bali 30 years ago," enthuses
an older French-Vietnamese man, wearing a beret, strolling by. His
wife adds a familiar sentiment, "And I hope it won't be the Bali
of today."
Back at our three-star resort the only
eccentric issue is the spelling on the menu. "Chicken poured down
by hot animal fat" and "slided steam with flagrant weed (elephant
snail)" turn out to be far more succulent than their descriptions
suggest. For $US22 ($27) a night, including breakfast, it would be
churlish to expect perfect proofreading as well. Breakfast is
either glass noodle pho with cuttlefish and prawns or a
Western-style omelet with fresh rolls. The French colonials may be
long gone but they left behind excellent bakers. The breakfast
rolls are even better when washed down with dense, rich Vietnamese
coffee dripped into a tumbler over an inch of sweetened condensed
milk.
Other than swimming and touring, plus
perhaps diving and shopping for pearls, the big event on Phu Quoc
is eating well and eating often.
Teaming up with Trevor and Thuy, an
Australian-Vietnamese couple from Perth, we hire a car and driver
to tour the rugged, hilly northern half of the island. At Ganh Giau
we find the Hero Temple that commemorates Nguyen Trung Truc, a
local resistance leader who sank a French battleship in 1861. For
this he was executed, but not before defiantly prophesying: "Only
when Westerners have exterminated all the grass in Vietnam will we
run out of anti-Western fighters."
Soon after, on a boat ride out to a fish
farm pontoon, we meet another Vietnamese-Australian, Joe ("from
Flemington markets, mate"), here to look at the possibilities of
building a small resort for his retirement years. Considered an
American collaborator at the end of the conflict in 1975, he
escaped by boat to Malaysia and was eventually re-settled in
Australia. All this, it seems, is now forgiven.
The capacity to paper-over the schisms of
the past and specifically the conflicted loyalties that arose
during what the Vietnamese call the "American War" are highlighted
when my friend Tien reveals her mother's brother and sister (who
was killed in action) were both Vietcong. Her own husband was
working for an American firm.
"So, your mother had immediate family
fighting on both sides?" I ask. "Yes. But in different years," she
answers pragmatically.
Back in Duong Dong, in the cool of the
evening everyone seems to drag out a chair onto the street. Lacking
a cinema and a strip of bars, they make do with conversation.
Over noodles, we swap our crosscultural
verdicts on Phu Quoc. Thuy and Tien both like the island's
beautiful beaches but have reservations about its "poor" villages
and Duong Dong - "not exciting". Unspoiled as it is, Phu Quoc for
them is somewhat boring. Which suits Trevor just fine: "No
jet-skis, karaoke or casino? Perfect." he says. I'm on his
side
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