Phu Quoc and why you should think twice before going there

After the hustle and bustle of HCMC we wanted to have some beach time before we'd go to Hong Kong and then home via Russia. From what I had heard Phu Quoc, a big island in the south of Vietnam, seemed to be a perfect destination for a quiet getaway. However, things turned out differently.

Getting to Phu Quoc was pretty straightforward. Catch a bus from HCMC to either Ha Tien or Rach Gia from where there are daily ferries to Phu Quoc. You can easily make it in a day. Or check out VietJet, a low-cost carrier with incredibly cheap flights at times.

For our first night we stayed in a hostel in the main town of Duong Dong. From here we wanted to explore the island by motorbike to find a quiet and cheap bungalow place at the beach such as we knew from previous trips to Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia. This turned out to be mission impossible. A quiet and peaceful island ten years ago there is now major development everywhere. The whole island seems to be a construction site. There are resort style high-class hotels everywhere charging exaggerated prices even though many of them are already run-down. Prices were hardly negotiable even though it was low season. One negative highlight was approaching Vinpearl resort with its crappy disney-style copies and endless rows of same-same houses. Another downside of these developments is that all but a few stretches of beach are hijacked by these resorts and you are not allowed to enter these stretches of beach if you are not their guests.

We basically ended up checking out all beaches only to be disappointed by finding them occupied by resorts and their barbed-wire fences and walls. The only undeveloped beach was Ong Lang beach but even there we found a construction site turning it into a resort pretty soon. In the end we stayed in our hostel and decided to go back to HCMC earlier since even this Moloch of a mega city seemed more relaxing than this resort-everywhere-infested place of paradise lost.