December 31, 2014 – Phu Quoc Motorcycle Tour – Day Two
We started this morning by driving south down the west side of the island, past miles and miles and miles of beautiful beach, which I’m sure will all be developed in ten years, but for now it’s just empty with the occasional very rudimentary shack that the locals put up to use as their ‘summer cottages’. Then we cut across the island and stopped off at another of the principal cash crops of the island, Nuoc Mam. The factory we visited contained perhaps twenty giant wooden barrels (5000 gallons?) that were full of rotting anchovies (they are the best kind for this). They rot for a while, then the juice is drained off, and that’s the really good stuff for salads and things. Then they top up the barrels with oil and let them do their thing for a while longer, drain them again, that’s your fish sauce for cooking. Then they take the crud left in the barrels, which must be really something, and sell it to the pepper-farm guys as fertilizer. No anchovy gets left behind. Hong says that the factory we visited requires ten boats and one hundred fishermen working full-time to keep it at full production, and there are quite a few of these factories, so it’s a great source of local employment.
Deb: The fish sauce factory making Nuoc Mam was pretty interesting and very smelly. The best sauce is the stuff that takes 1 year to make & ends up being 43%. Once that is made, they take all the anchovies from that batch and put them through the press again, but the process is only 6 months and ends up only being 18%. This sauce is used for cooking only. The fellow who started this had just a ceramic vase full of anchovies & a board with a brick on top. The island joke, according to Hong: ‘How many bottles of fish sauce can you take with you to Thailand?’ The answer is none. Why? Because the border guards take it from you because their fish sauce isn’t as good as Phu Quoc’s…and then Hong laughed & laughed & laughed. (Thailand is also well known for its fish sauce).
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Mister Hong with the anchovies vats.
Siphoning out of the vats into – vats.
Bottling is done by hand.
This girl could sell anything.
Yer sippin’ fish goo.
Then we headed down to the southern tip of the island to check out the largest town and the main port. It’s pretty typical of most third-world port cities, but quite a bit cleaner than usual. There’s a big Catholic church, Hong says that the south end of the island is Catholic and attends the church here, while the north end of the island is Buddhist and goes to the temples in the northern towns. He couldn’t say whether that’s an artifact of the recent wars or just a convenient arrangement that evolved…. We spent most of our time down on the dock in the harbour, where Hong explained that all Vietnamese ships are colour-coded; fishing boats are blue and/or green, tourist boats are white with blue and/or green trim, freighters are grey with blue and/or green trim, and navy boats are any bloody colour they want to be. OK, I made up the last one.
A military training vessel, like our Tall Ships.
Deb: These navy boats go out with the squid/shrimp boats at night, incognito. Yes, they do fish, but they fit in and are actually on the lookout for smugglers/traffickers. They move in & out of the fishing fleet with ease. If they manage to bring in a catch, then their work has been profitable. Everyone knows what they look like during the day, as they are all painted the same, but at night, no one knows…except for the Shadow. (Anyone remember that CBC Radio show before we had TV?)
Honking big tiger snail. Yum.
Loaded to the gunwales (literally) with nuoc mam (fish sauce) for the mainland.
Reloading the trap specifically to catch the pregnant lobsters. I’m sure there’s a trick.
By now, we were all getting a bit peckish, so it was time to motor up the east side of the island and down a crappy little dirt road to a restaurant on an absolutely lovely beach where we could relax and relieve ourselves of the stresses of the morning.
Deb: This is where we met our young friend Hoang, whom we looked up in Ho Chi Min City when we got there. In the afternoon, it usually gets quite windy. My driver, Hong, who is just a little wisp of a thing, said he was glad I was on the back of the bike. Otherwise, he would be blown off the road. These Vietnamese have no problem telling you that you are fat; as one Aussie put it,…they tell the Russians they are fat & have big guts all the time.
Amazing beach. Bai Sao Beach.
The view from our lunch table.
Who says plastic bags can’t be scary? Steve had to kill it twice to make sure.
It’s mid-afternoon again, and time to start working our way homewards. But on the way, Hong took us to ‘the waterfalls’, which have a ton of really interesting statues and gardens, and then there is a pretty significant walk up through the forest to a waterfall. We decided to give it a go, but it was pretty discouraging at first because there was NO WATER in the stream. After a while, some started to show up, and by the time we got up a kilometer or so, there were some very nice pools, which we desecrated with our sweaty pink bodies.
This is a real tree. They stucco-ed the interior…
Canadians know how to deal with giant carnivorous lizards.
Never give up.
Tough hiking in sandals.
A pair of the elusive Pink-Bellied River Mammals.
Then it was back down to the bikes and time to head home for beers. Once we got back to town, it was time to say our thank yous and goodbyes. Steve’s driver took off his sunglasses for the first time, and one of his eyes was completely walled over. Steve had been riding with a blind guy! After a few seconds’ reflection, we realized that he’d done a bloody good job with what he had, and it wasn’t something to get excited about…
(Deb: quite a good laugh about the deaf guy riding with the blind guy)
Deb: The rules of the road are that there are none. On the ‘freeway’/main road, there is a meridian that goes for miles without being able to cross it. So, if you’re turning left at some point, you ride on that side of the road facing traffic until your turn comes. A little unnerving when you’re riding down the middle of the damn lane and bikes & cars are passing on both sides of you going the other way. I asked about accidents: “Yes there are some, but mostly just crashes into each other, the real accidents are always fatal, and they are always on the highway. Hmmm, aren’t we on the highway? No, this is just a shortcut.”
Here is your typical gas station. You may be out in the middle of nowhere, but no bike will run without gas. Some stands will have 1 litre bottles or pop bottles, but everyone knows exactly how much gas they are getting and paying the right price.
A combination gas station / grocery store.
Here is a guy packing a piece of glass on his bike. Just think about that..the wind force, the traffic passing by sometimes within mere inches of each other. Pretty impressive – you gotta do what you gotta do.
This was our first set of tours in Vietnam so we don’t have anything to compare it to, but Hong provided us with a first-class experience and a very capable and humorous interpretation for $15/day/bike, which was $5 for gas and $10 for the driver, roughly double the average daily wage here. We paid them $20/day/bike, and everyone was very happy all around. I think the secret was in Deb finding someone who was reasonably fluent in English and who liked the work.
Deb: There were many things we didn’t do/see on this island, but I wasn’t isn’t going to see a Dog Farm, a Crocodile Farm where they raise them specifically for meat & purses/shoes etc and some more waterfalls (it’s the dry season) and another Pagoda, the Su Muong (Pagoda‘d out & Wat’d out after Cambodia). We never did get to any of the islands for snorkelling. Whenever there is wind, it’s too rough for me to snorkel, and it’s always windy. Give me the Vancouver Aquarium, and I may snorkel.