01/22/2026 - 02/04/2026

We had another incredibly easy travel day when we left Hoi An and Central Vietnam for our final Vietnam destination, Phu Quoc which is an island off the far southern coast of Vietnam very close to Cambodia.

Phu Quoc is a pretty large island, stretching about 30 miles from north to south and about 225 total square miles. There are about 180,000 residents and a crap ton of tourists! Like the rest of Vietnam, the locals are very poor and the rural villages are full of little shacks and trash. There are a few areas that are nice, but in between, it’s pretty grubby. But the beaches and sunsets and are SO beautiful!

We stayed in a town called Duong Dong which is on the west coast at about the halfway point between north and south. It could not have been more perfect. Plenty of good restaurants, walking distance to the night market, and the most beautiful sunsets literally every night. It’s admittedly touristy and there are a lot of hotels and resorts, but the Vietnam “feel” is definitely still present. What we really liked were the walkable sidewalks! It was pretty much the only place we have been in Vietnam where you could actually walk on the sidewalks largely unobstructed! It’s the little things you grow to appreciate on these adventures!

We did a jeep tour of the northern part of the island. The jeep was so cool, it was left behind by the Americans after the war, so this thing was literally about 55+ years old …note the interior photo of the little “handle” on the windshield to manually operate the wipers, and the key that looks like an allen wrench!

Our guide was 73 years and had fought in the war for 3 years with the Americans. He was pretty open with us about how he feels about communism and the life and options he was left with after the war ended after having fought for the losing side. It was some interesting conversation.

When we were in the jungle, he asked Grady if he wanted to drive. So Grady got in the drivers seat and was given a “lesson” on driving. I think the main thing our guide wanted to get across was the importance of honking! Seriously, they honk NON-STOP here. We were in a jungle with no one else around, but he made sure Grady knew to honk prior to every little curve or hill. So Grady was driving along honking his little heart out and our guide was gushing about what a great driver he was! It was all pretty comical from the back seat!

We stopped off at a place called “Grand World” to snap a few photos. What a weird place! It’s an enormous complex built in 2021 by Vingroup, which is Vietnam's largest private multi-sector conglomerate. They also own VinFast EV cars… which might sound familiar to our NC peeps since they are opening a plant in Pittsboro. Grand World is huge and the inside is apparently designed to look European (we didn’t venture that far in).

The entrance had massive random sculptures and also an amazing building made of bamboo. It is kind of in the middle of no where and looked like a ghost town when we stopped. Our guide said there are hundreds and hundreds of condos sitting empty because no one wants to buy them. And on the outskirts, there are a few miles of beautiful retail buildings that were built as part of the project… all sitting empty. It is so strange, like a fake empty town. Who knows, maybe it will take off. But there is literally nothing authentic about it, so I am not sure why anyone would travel all the way to Vietnam to stay at this fake European town!

After snapping a few photos outside Grand World, we drove to a little fishing village at the furthest northern point of the island where you could see Cambodia in the distance.

Next we drove through the jungle and saw a gigantic banyan tree that is supposed to be a big deal. We weren’t overly impressed. We were kind of expecting it to look more like the massive banyan trees we saw in Hawaii.

We did see a pretty big lizard though… he was kind of cool!

Once we were through the jungle, we came out in a beachy area where we took a sketchy little boat to Starfish Beach. The beach was beautiful, and of course, the starfish were pretty cool. But it was kind of frustrating watching all the assholes who thought it was ok to hold the starfish. Then the sketchy little boat took us back for lunch at a cool little over water restaurant for some seriously fresh seafood.

To end our day, we visited a pepper farm and then a bee farm. The pepper farm was marginally interesting. The bee farm was super cool. The kid showing us around wasn’t the least bit afraid of the bees. He wasn’t wearing a bit of protection. He smoked them a bit to chill them out, but then he was all up in their business pulling out every frame to show us the bees – which ones were workers (females) and which ones were the lazy drones (males) and, of course, to hunt for the queen. He picked a drone off to hold and to offer to us to hold. One worker (stinging) bee came along for the ride and sat on his hand for a bit. He had no issue with it. He even convinced some of the guests (Grady included) that holding one of the frames was a good idea. Mr. Doug would have LOVED this SO much!! Mr. Doug’s wife would not have liked him getting stupid ideas!

We drove down an interesting stretch of road that had actually been the old airport (so we were literally driving on the old runway. The airport was built by the French in the 1930’s and used by the Americans during the war. There is now an enormous statue of Ho Chi Minh at the end of the “runway”

We did a tour to the far south end of the island where there is another pretend European “town” designed by a different company (Sun World). It is supposed to mimic the Amalfi Coast. This one at least had tourists roaming about… a lot of them! This part of the island is linked to an island (Hon Thom Island) by an 8km cable car. The main point of this tour was for Grady to do a little snorkeling (which he said was just ok) and to ride the cable car.

We drove toward the south end of the island where we boarded a boat and hit a couple super touristy snorkel stops followed by Hon Thom Island which is really REALLY touristy. Everything on the island was also developed by Sun World. There was a giant water park and some restaurants and retail shops. We had lunch at a giant buffet restaurant that made a Carnival Cruise buffet during spring break feel high class! Just outside the water park is a beach and a crap ton of completely empty buildings that appear to have been built as retail on the first floor and 3-5 floors of condos above. There were literally 100’s of empty buildings, a bit like the complex we saw at the north end of the island.

After hanging out on the island for a bit, we got to take the cable car back to the mainland. This was the highlight of the day. The cable car was awesome! It is the longest non-stop three-wire sea-crossing cable car in the world. It is 8km (7,899.9 meters) and took about 20 minutes to get back to the mainland. The views were spectacular… the photos are so so because they were (obviously) through the glass which wasn’t super clean and had some reflection.

For our final dinner in Vietnam, we decided to hit a seafood restaurant that grills your dinner up on a grill on the sidewalk. And we had to select the fish from the tanks… I made Grady do that part! I had lobster tails (they served just the tail and had it cut open), Grady got grouper. It was the whole stinking fish!

As we end our time in Vietnam, we would be remiss not to mention the scooters. No blog about Vietnam would be complete without mention of the scooters. Holy CRAP there are SO MANY! And they honk non-stop! We will not miss that in the least. These people are resourceful… we saw them hauling everything from refrigerators to trash via scooter. We saw a guy with a cooler on the back using his scooter like a little food truck to sell food to local factory workers to make a living.

In the US we put children in government approved child safety seats positioned in the back seat of the car until they are eight years old. In Vietnam infants are strapped to adults on scooters and toddlers are balanced precariously on the seat or a little makeshift stool in front of the driver… typically with no helmets. It is pretty unbelievable. And, of course, for many families a scooter is the only transportation they have, so seeing whole families on a scooter is super common. Safety is definitely not a concern in Vietnam!

Photos are from all over Vietnam (not specifically Phu Quoc)

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