Week 9 Phu Quoc Paradise or maybe Heaven

After 2 days of travel (night train from Jodhpur, 15 hours at the Delhi airport, night flight from Delhi to Saigon through Bangkok and a short morning propeller flight from Saigon to Phu Quoc and half an hour taxi ride through some unpaved roads) we arrived in Freedomland resort on the Phu Quoc island. So in this blog I will describe of our 4.5 days in paradise or maybe heaven, not sure have not been in either, so that I have a record of how paradise or heaven should look like in case I do not make it there again..

So what did we do in heaven….

Day 1: Right after checking in, absolutely exhausted we walked for 15 minutes to the closest beach as Freedomland is located inland unlike all other beach resorts on the island had some tropical juice we fell asleep and woke up when the sun was setting down. That’s it, that’s all we did on our first day

Day 2: We joined the boat trip to the northern secluded beach on the island, very close to the border with Cambodia and again not much happened… We swam in the middle of the sea, we sat on the beach with nobody else there and ate crabs caught on the beach and squid that we bought straight from the fishing boat on our way. The squid was served with crushed black pepper grown on the island with a bit of lemon! How simple and good.

Day 3: We woke up very late with a slight sunburn from previous day so we decided to rent a car for half day tour of the island. After we quick shopping at the local market where we had to use hands and pictorials to purchase some supplies we headed to the waterfall. Maybe it was not the world’s most spectacular waterfall but it was a great pleasure to shower under the crystal clear waters in complete seclusion! We went to the most southern end of the for a swim in the sea and returned home…

Day 4: One day away from the beach was enough. We spend the day again on the beach in the Mango Bay resort where I treated myself with foot massage and a pedicure. My feet where very grateful J and we finished the day with beers over sunset!  Day 5: Not much to say here… we just went to the beach in Mango Bay again and did absolutely nothing. Oh no, we read the book!



The highlight of our stay in Phu Quoc was the dinner. Every night Peter (the owner of Freedomland) cooked a communal 5-course dinner from the fresh produce that he bought in the market. I am not a foodie and certainly not a food writer so I do luck words to explain how good it was! So just take my word for it, it was really great. It was mostly traditional Vietnamese cooking but we also had one Spanish tapas night. And the best part of this was that there was no menu, no choices to make, we just ate what we were served. And there was also the company!  All the guests (who never met before) sat at the long table under the trees and chatted about everything and nothing, the French, English, Australian and surprisingly also Polish. Peter says that Polish people often come to his resort, always like and are the very welcomed guest!  

After 5 days in Phu Quoc we fully recovered from the hassles of travelling through India, physically and emotionally! We only got one evening full of flashbacks when a couple from Melbourne arrived straight from Delhi after 2 months tour of India and turned out that we had similar if not the same experiences and the same perceptions of the country. So just a little validation to what I wrote in my blog entries from India

We not only recovered from previous travels but gathered energy for our upcoming cycling trip from Saigon to Hanoi. Let’s see if mainland Vietnam would resemble paradise that we encountered on Phu Quoc.