Ò ó o *

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." - Isak Dinesen

I have now been in Vietnam for over five months. When I arrived, I felt like ten months would last forever. I questioned and re-questioned my decision to come. I sweat through the days and, on some nights, I cried. Now, I have been renewed in the sea. I feel like I have been tempered in heat and water. What comes next is the downhill. I've made it through five months already, and I know I can do it one more time.

Below, the first part of Elliot's last week in Vietnam. I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

12.26
On Christmas night we had dinner at Truong Ky, and with helpful texts from Trang I managed to order exactlly what I wanted (sour soup and screaming fish). It was one of Elliot's top ranked meals.

The aftermath

As promised, our trip to Phu Quoc ended up being quite the adventure. We got up and dawn had yet to crack. We had to be at the bus station at six to make sure they wouldn't sell out of tickets for the 7am bus to Ha Tien. The sky lightened and the hour passed more quickly than expected. We watched a pair of guys load a motorbike onto the rack at the top of another bus. When we got on the bus we were quickly ushered to the back row, despite our seat assignments in the front. I think we were relocated because the back row is the roomiest, and the driver immediately realized that Elliot wouldn't really fit anywhere else. We had large, woven straw bags all around us, and one of them was crowing. After another bag chimed in I wondered if the bags at my feet, upon which I had placed my own bags, might also contain roosters. They did. Oops. Occasionally, roosters from other buses joined in, too. We had yet to depart, and we were already having a barnyard experience -- admittedly rather like how I expected my first bus ride to be, many months ago. It was funny in the beginning, but they were quite the rowdy bunch and I wondered whether, by the time we reached our destination, I would develop some pavlovian response to a rooster's crowing. As Elliot put it, "If the rooster can't be happy, no one can."

At the bus station

Our seatmates

The boisterous roosters turned out to be the least of our worries; they quieted down once we got moving. We left about 30 minutes behind schedule because the battery needed replacing, and for a while I wondered if we would have to wait until the next day. Once we were on the road I managed to sleep, or perhaps just failed to stay awake, through the first two hours or so. When I came to I discovered that we had taken on some more passengers: several new roosters and about eight people more than there were seats. Some were kids on laps, some were adults on low stools in the aisle, one was a guy in the rear cargo area full of rooster bags. Periodically, salespeople would board the bus. One man went through a full infomercial-style demonstration of a multipurpose peeler/chopper/grater.

After a while we stopped. We just stopped. Snack vendors swarmed around and onto the bus. Cakes, crackers, fruits, eggs, cigarettes, beverages. We bought a mega rice cracker coated in caramel, sesame seeds, and peanuts. It was delicious. Eventually we realized that we had stopped because we were in line to get on a ferry. At that point we'd been on the bus for about four hours. I realized that I didn't really know how long it would take for us to reach our destination. We trundled on.

Six hours in, I started to feel it. I'm used to long hauls on the road and the bus wasn't uncomfortable, but I wanted to arrive. At 1pm we arrived in Rach Gia, the place I had originally been told to go but not the destination Trang had told me to reach. The majority of the roosters disembarked here, but we pressed on. My only fear, which I tried to quell, was that we would arrive in Ha Tien only to find that we couldn't take a boat from there and that we'd have to bus right back to Rach Gia. I called Trang to make sure we were going to the right place and she chose that moment to inform me that we wouldn't be arriving in Ha Tien in time for the last boat to Phu Quoc. That might have been nice to know earlier, but I admit it was a little comforting to know I wouldn't be spending even more time in transit. The last two hours dragged on a bit, but the last 20km were probably the highlight of the ride. We finally reached something that felt like countryside. We saw rice paddies and the ocean. We rumbled along, spending more time airborne above our seats than actually sitting. We had a close shave with a big truck when rounding a bend. And then, finally, after eight hours on the bus, we were booted off and standing on the side of the road.

Rice fields

We were approached by a young xe om driver who spoke great English. He explained that we could not take a boat until the following day, offered to get us tickets, and take us to the city center for now. Easy.

Our trajectory, more or less. Google maps claims it takes just over four hours.

We spent the rest of the evening wandering, enjoying a soursop smoothie (whose flavor revealed to me that it is the same as the much more familiar guanábana) and seafood stirfry.

12.27
We decided to take advantage of having a day in an unexpected location, so we chose to take the 130pm boat to Phu Quoc. We had a leisurely morning and explored the nearby markets. At 1130 it was time to head to the ferry. Why we had to get there so early, I have no idea. I suspect our xe om driver/travel agent just wanted to have time for his afternoon nap. Again, the wait passed quickly. The boat ride wasn't too exciting and, true to form, I ended up falling asleep.

This little piggy went to market...

View through the boat window

On the other side, we disembarked and walked a long, narrow, rail-less pier. Being in Vietnam, this walk was punctuated by the horns of motorbikes behind us, so loaded with cargo that they were almost as wide as the pier. We spent the afternoon exploring. The Cao Dai religion was founded in Phu Quoc, and we visited a temple, climbing incredibly steep stairways to get to the top and get a great view of our surroundings. We also visited a combination lighthouse and Buddhist temple. Trang had advised me to eat squid here and my guidebook recommended getting seafood at the night market. We had squid and snails and fried rice for dinner.

Inside the Cao Dai temple

View from the top of the temple

Looking in another direction

and one more direction

temple and lighthouse

The start of dinner

12.28
Our first destination for the day was the fish sauce factory (fish sauce is one of Phu Quoc's biggest exports). After reading about factory visits in almost every guidebook or travel reference, I expected there to be tours or some kind of tourist infrastructure. But, when we arrived, we couldn't find any indication of where to go or what to do. People were unloading boats full of fish. A room full of vats was wide open, but there was no one there. Were we allowed in? We hoped that if we stood around looking confused someone would give us some direction, but we were mostly ignored or met with slightly cold looks. Finally, I asked a waiter at an attached cafe what we should do. He told us we could just go on in, so we did.

Vats and more vats -- the smell wasn't as bad as the book made it out to be

Out of the brown vats and into the blue ones

In the afternoon we spent some time at Long Beach, and in the evening we went night squid fishing. I caught my first fish! Neither of us caught any squid, but everyone was treated to a delectable meal at the end. Even better, half of the people at our table were too picky or too seasick to eat, so we got a double ration of the fish, scallops, noodles, and squid porridge.

It was like being in a postcard

Double rainbow!

The sunset was unreal

Dinner spread

Ever since he saw it, Elliot had been curious about a canned beverage made of bird's nest. He decided to try it after our fishing trip. As he was buying it, another foreigner asked him if he'd had it before, saying that he himself found it to be quite awful, and warned Elliot that there were chunks of fungus in it. When Elliot tried it, he was prepared to be disgusted. The first sip was ok, the second made him disinclined to have a third. I tried it too, and to be honest it tasted exactly like lucky charms marshmallows to me. Not unpleasant, but not necessarily a taste I would want to be drinking.

Ingredients: water, white fungus, sugars, bird's nest

12.29
We signed up for a "hard trek", so titled in the brochure, up Ham Ninh mountain. What we actually got was a pleasant walk with lots of close brush, occasional slight verticals, lots of rests, and lots of ants. We also got to try fresh pepper, which is Phu Quoc's other major product; sweet coconuts whose juice Elliot actually deigned drinkable; jackfruit; star apple, also known as milk apple or milk fruit; and green mango.

Fresh peppercorns

 Above, a milk fruit demonstrates its name and mine has a larva inside.

Near the end of the 'hard trek'

I played Vietnamese cuisine expert and ordered us a lunch including lotus stem salad, steamed morning glory, fried squid, and seafood stir fry. After all of that, we adjourned to the beach. The water felt great and so did the sun. We chose to relax rather than take advantage of the beach massages and depilatory services, including 'beard trinming.' We stayed there until sunset.

We went back to the night market for dinner, and this night we had grilled scallops, shrimp in tamarind sauce, grilled squid, and fried rice. Later, we found a place that advertised Saigon Special, a Vietnamese beer I had yet to try. It wasn't particularly noteworthy, but it's always nice to try something new.

*The title of this post is the sound a rooster makes in Vietnamese.