If you ever wondered what Thailand was as with the late 1980s, check out Phu Quoc Island off the southwest coast of Vietnam, the newest hop for the Gulf of Siam's circuit that embraces Koh Samui, Koh Chang and Koh Kong.
Phu Quoc is fast-becoming Vietnam's hottest new island destination. But it also maintains -- no less than for now -- a character unlike anything in Thailand.
Market traders in conical hats hawk baguettes, ducks, flying lizards and other items rarely seen on the Thai side of the Gulf, while motorcycles ply red dirt roads to pearl farms and old-style fishing ports.
Villagers, who water the roads and erect thatch fences to protect their homes from dust, gather up seaweed and haul in squid nets by pedaling homemade winches.
Protected forest reserves on Phu Quoc are splashed with waterfalls where brave Vietnamese youths enjoy cooling off alongside foreign travelers.
The industriousness from the islanders has boosted the local economy -- and prices -- by around ten percent per year. Protected forest reserves on Phu Quoc teem with waterfalls where brave Vietnamese youths enjoy cooling off alongside foreign travelers.
Two million tourists by 2020
Amid government intends to expand Duong Dong airport to deal with international flights, Phu Quoc -- the most important of Vietnam's islands at 574 square kilometers -- has taken off fast.
The government intends to boost annual tourist arrivals from 77,000 this season to 2 million by 2020, and many investors from Europe, Thailand, Malaysia and mainland Vietnam are buying up land and opening restaurants and dive shops.
Many veterans of Thailand happen to be comparing it to Koh Samui within the 1980s, or Koh Chang inside the 1990s.
“The phuquoc island hotels carries a very nice preserved forest and the size is also nice,” says Jean-Marie Helleputte, a judge from Belgium who bought land not too long ago near Phu Quoc's Long Beach with his wife Thanh, a Vietnamese exile who may have returned to her native country.
“You have a huge assortment of plants and trees along with the beaches are very nice. The colors of nature here are splendid, many different greens since it rains a whole lot.”
He phu quoc hotels says new roads are earning travel easier, especially inside the muddy rainy season, and new taxi companies, whose drivers wear shirts and ties, are driving down transport costs to more sensible levels.
But like others on the island, Mr Helleputte worries which a growing influx of tourists and construction will disturb this tropical isle's tranquility. “The Vietnamese government could make this a little Singapore," according to him. "The inhabitants of Phu Quoc are making a lot of money by selling their land to foreigners for construction of hotels.”
Sanne Rasmussen, an instructor with Rainbow Divers, which was operating dive trips off Phu Quoc for a decade, says increasing numbers of tourists, big hotels and asphalt roads will need away “the charm of unspoilt Vietnam” and turn this tropical isle into “every other city all over the world.”
Using local coconut wood and thatch, construction workers along with their families are working fast to assist Vietnam's tourism industry meet up with Thailand.
Dive spots and delicacies
“My perspective is that the area is not ready in any way for this -- you can still find power cuts almost daily in high season and a few places don't possess hot water.”
The water inside ocean, at least, is usually a nice temperature for diving and snorkeling.
Rasmussen says that shallow waters around smaller islands are great for entry-level divers, and expert divers also can look for nudibranchs, cowrie shells, bamboo sharks and turtles.
She says that Rainbow Divers have just lately discovered an ocean grass site with sea dragons and spotted dugongs, some in the rarest creatures in southeast Asia.
While the colorful fish resemble their neighbors inside Gulf of Siam, Phu Quoc's cuisine is more influenced by French touches, and the island also produces delicious pepper and nuoc mam fish sauce.
Among the myriad stalls with the bustling night market, Rasmussen says her favorites include breakfast or tapas at Mondo, belonging to a Swedish couple; German food at German B; Peppers Pizza; for restaurants in front of the Viet Thanh hotel; and low at the wonderfully-named Mister Dung.
For upmarket resorts, she recommends Eden, Mango Bay especially Chen La for honeymooners, while many divers stay on the Viet Thanh hotel.
Half-way down the long beach from Duong Dong town, the family-run Thai Tan Tien resort offers spacious new bungalows for US$20 per night in a quiet abode using a boardwalk leading over a marsh to your seaside restaurant where enterprising local ladies give traditional massages for the beach.
For now, Phu Quoc is fun inside a raw form, still dominated by local families who rent motorcycles for US$5 per day and bungalows for US$20 per night.
Though lacking Thailand's abundance of “Coffee-Mate” white sand, Phu Quoc's golden beaches are deep, soft, and attracting more and more travelers.
The simple life of Thai islands inside the 1980s is kept intact about the island of phu quoc hotels - just click the following post - Quoc.
Getting there
Travelers from Saigon used to swear by the cheap flights (around US$50-100) on Vietnam Airlines, Mekong Air kinds to avoid long, tiring bus journeys from the Mekong delta's matrix of swamps.
But new bridges and smoother roads mean quicker, cheaper bus trips -- mine took 5 hours -- to Rach Gia port, therefore the fast hydrofoils, about 2 hours, to Phu Quoc.
Ha Tien, only 1 hour ferry from Phu Quoc, can be a jumping off point for Cambodia.