Ruou Sim Bay Gao

On my last trip to Phu Quoc, I stopped at Bay Gao Sim wine house and work shop. The proprietor is the first man to make Sim wine in Phu Quoc using the traditional central highland style of one of the minority groups. He started making it over 20 years ago but started his own business in just the last 14 years.

This special Sim fruit is grown in Phu Quoc and only bears fruit for a very short season from February to April. To make the wine, Mr Bay Gao needs to buy from the growers in the forest then ferments it for 3 months.

This wine is apparently good for upset stomachs and sleeplessness. It tastes a little bit like red wine and is also said to relieve stress, guard against physical tiredness and prevent bladder infections. Like so many kinds of alcohol in Vietnam, it seems to be a miracle cure.



Address : Sime Wine Bay Gao

124 Duong 30/4, Khu Pho 1. THi Tran Duong Dong, Huyen Phu Quoc - Kien Giang

Saigon, July 2010

I'm in Saigon for a few days before taking some members of my family to Bangkok for a short vacation. The weather in Saigon is a bit different to Hanoi but I like Saigon as it always cool from 4pm which is much better. At the moment it's rainy season which helps keep temperatures down a bit.

Yesterday, when I wandering around the market in the afternnon when I realised my Iphone had gone. I'm very upset with myself for not being more careful with my bag. Normally in Hanoi I know exactly what's going an around me and where my phone is. I just lost concentration for a second and it was gone!

I'm trying not to let this incident ruin my holiday but it's hard. After trying to call the phone a few times I gave up and went back to the hotel. Later in the evening I went out for some snacks, including duck eggs and crabs with tamarind sauce. This made me feel better but I'm still thinking about the phone.

I was trying to take few photos of the food but I couldn't get them in focus, which I hate. There must have been something wrong with me at the time. I decided to walk back to the hotel for an early night. The next day I returned and had more success taking photos of the food. I really love eating from this old lady who has quite a striking face. She is quite a character, smoking, swearing and laughing with all of her customers. She rocks everybody who comes to her stall.

I also went to my favorite Hu Tiu vendor for breakfast. It was great to see she remembered me and what I normally order as extras such as fresh beanshoots, a bit more dried onion... The only thing that she doesn't know is that I don't eat lots of meat and noodles now because I am trying to loose some weight and workout on my belly. Anyway, I went back to her shop for every breakfast and the day I left early for Bangkok, I got up extra early for another serve of noodles.

A smile and a wave from her was a great start to my trip.

Disappointing Aspects of Phu Quoc

I spent two weeks in Phu Quoc and everything seemed perfect with great weather and beautiful food, especially the seafood. But as always, there were some issues that came up

I went out for lunch on one particular day, walking along the beach just up from the bungalows we stayed at to try to have some different food instead of going into town. Unfortunately, it was a mistake to choose the Lien Hiep Thanh Hotel and Restaurant right on the beach. I ordered grilled squid with salt and chilli, spring rolls and sour broth with tuna. It sounded great as these are specialist dishes from Phu Quoc and most places I've been they had been so nice and yummy. Well, they served us boiled squid instead of grilled and I told the waiter that it was not what we ordered in a polite way but he denied it, telling me this is their restaurant's grilling technique. I was a bit upset and I ended up taking it back to the kitchen myself and they promised to make a new dish for me. Ten minutes later, the same plate came back with the half bitten piece of squid. I couldn't say a word as they were so hopeless and they waiter tried to make a joke but it turned out all stupid. The sour broth with tuna which should be great as it's simple to make was tasteless, the tuna wasn't cooked enough and, if that wasn't enough, the spring rolls tasted like they were from the super market. Totally sucked down there at the Lien Thanh!!!! No tip and worst meal of my life.

On another point, I was expecting the food at the night market to be cheap but it didn't work that way. Most restaurants at the night market were more expensive than restaurants in town and in the hotel. A prawn cost $4, 4 pieces of squid cost $5, a pice of tuna cost $5. Hello!!! this is Phu Quoc, an island where you can catch fish anywhere.

Phu Quoc, Here I Am....

I am in Phu Quoc, the place to be!!! This is my second time here but I feel like I know this place very well. The people I met last time, from the hotel staff to the people who live around, are all still here. They are gorgeous with smiling faces and so sweet. We're staying at the Thanh Kieu Resort, the same place I stayed last time. I was lucky enough to get a room here as I booked way in advance as I heard some people couldn't get a room or had to pay lots of money for due to Tet holiday.

This is the first time I am not going home for Tet. I just want to do something different as I've been home every year for the last 8 years. I also want to spend sometime here to relax and enjoy myself. I do love my city but I went home last month to visit my family and my mother seemed happy with my decision.

The weather in Phu Quoc is so beautiful compared to the freezing cold in Hanoi and it makes me feel so great. I am going to go to the beach to relax for the first few days and read a bit then off to the city for dinner at the night market which has the best food in town and REALLY CHEAP!!!! They're cooking fresh seafood in the Phu Quoc style which is a bit different compared to other cities in Vietnam. I will eat all of my favorites, especially stir fried crab with tamarind sauce. My mouth is watering now just thinking about it!!!

Happy Tet every one and see you in the next few posts.

Coriander Restaurant

Do you like Thai restaurants? It's a bit hard to decide which Thai restaurant to go to in Ho Chi Minh as there are so many to choose from. My friends told me about the Coriander Restaurant in the back packer area in Bui Vien street. This is a small and simple restaurant like others in this area. When choosing where to sit, there are three options that you can choose: the second floor, the first floor or the back room. I love the back room because it's very simple, traditional seating on floor cushions and nice Thai paintings on the walls.

The menu highlight was Pad Thai, great Thai green papaya salad and you cannot miss the Thai green chicken curry. Take care though, as I was nearly crying when I finished the curry because I forgot to tell the waitress to make it mild.

Beside the Thai menu items, they also have some other Vietnamese and Western dishes and imported Thai drinks. The food is presented carefully and really tasty with big serves and quite cheap compared to other Thai restaurants in town that I've been to. I recommend this one!

Coriander restaurant
185 Bui Vien, District 1
Telephone 84.8.8371311
Mobile: 0909304814
Ho Chi Minh City

Rainbow Bar

The Rainbow Bar in Phu Quoc is the coolest and most relaxed bar on the island. Located right on the beach, furnished with simple tables and chairs and hospitable staff, it is the place to while away a few hours over drinks, a meal or a book.

During my recent trip to Phu Quoc, I visited this bar at various times of the day and enjoyed at least one meal here on each day of my stay. One particular dish which I couldn’t resist was their sour fish broth, a specialty of the south and one that is real comfort food for me. As a son of the south, raised in Nha Trang, I have very fond memories of my mum and sister cooking this soup at home. The Rainbow Bar produces a very fine version of it.

The French owner of the bar understands the need for drinks to be cold in this tropical climate. The beer was frosty at all times and he was mindful of wine drinkers, too, making sure that the bottles are cellared and stored adequately and served at the correct temperature. I enjoyed some lovely Chilean Sauvignon Blanc one evening.

The Rainbow Bar opened on the island five years ago after a successful period trading in Nha Trang, also beachside. When the local government reclaimed the land to develop the foreshore, the owner was forced to re-locate and saw the potential of Phu Quoc as a growing tourist destination. He hasn’t looked back since.

It’s easy to understand why. He has a great location. Who wouldn’t want to sit overlooking the sea, watching seafood grill on the evening barbeque, beer in hand and sunset in view. The seafood needs to be ordered in advance to avoid disappointment so I found myself planning my dinner at breakfast time. A fluent speaker of Vietnamese, the owner is a great resource of information on the island.

All in all, the Rainbow Bar is my kind of place.

Thanh Kieu Resort In Phu Quoc

Thanh Kieu sounds pretty much like thank you in English. Quite a clever, catchy name for a resort when I think about it. Easy to remember, too. Thanh Kieu Resort in Phu Quoc is located right on the beach, hidden away from the dusty red clay road. Surrounded by a tropical garden of bamboos, palms and tropical plants and flowers, this hotel is a little piece of paradise that I really feel like keeping secret.

A family business where most of the staff is related to the owner, the accommodation consists of mostly thatch-roofed bungalows with terraces overlooking the beach. A couple of newer bungalows with tiled roofs have been built recently but are simply equipped in exactly the same way, with two beds and the necessary mosquito nets, fridges, fans and cold water bathrooms. Well, to call it a resort might be a bit of an exaggeration but considering the beach is right outside, a hammock swings in the sea breeze and the weather is hot, there isn’t much call for a room with much more than the basics. Let’s just say, for me, it’s a resort.

On the hotel’s beachfront, two coconut palms grow almost parallel to the sand. I could’ve sat all day observing the simple things around me, sipping on cold mango juice and taking the occasional dip in the sea. The thing is, though, that the hotel’s chief receptionist, Mr Tuan is rich with knowledge and ideas about how to while away the time on this island. But there is no pressure. I just appreciate it when I’m kept well-informed of the activities and places of interest on offer. When I was feeling energetic, I took his advice to visit the pepper farms and the beautiful deserted star beach. He also directed and accompanied me to the night market for a taste of the local seafood. Good service is hard to find sometimes. Not here.

Established for around three years, no restaurant exists yet. This does not present any problems as the same plot of beachfront is occupied by the very casual Rainbow Bar. In the mornings, I just fell out of bed, wandered a few steps and ordered scrambled eggs on fresh round knots of bread. In the evenings, magnificent fresh seafood and tall cold bottles of beer were the perfect way to finish the day, whether it was an active one or a lazy one.

At night in bed, the fan whirs, the sea ebbs and flows and I think I must be dreaming. When I wake up, I realize it’s just another day in paradise.

Thanh Kieu Resort Coco Beach
100C/14 Tran Hung Dao Street
Duong Dong Town - Phu Quoc District
(84).(773).848394
Mobile: 0919 707 576 - 0917 200 725
Email : thanhkieucocobeach@yahoo.com

Phu Quoc Town

Phu Quoc is a really hot place for people who need a relaxing time on a beach which is still wild, quiet and peaceful. Phu Quoc people are generally friendly, sweet and helpful. The small town on the island is very interesting, surrounded by the ocean and people here rely on fishing and tourism for their daily income. Even though they all know that their small beach town is a great destination, everything seems very cheap here compared to other beach cities in Viet Nam which is good.

However, it's hard to get a good room here without making a reservation at least three weeks in advance as I did. I was so lucky to get the only room left on my arrival. You may get a cheap and doggy room for about $12 to $15. In Phu Quoc, a variety of tours also can fill your schedule up: daily boat trip, squid fishing in the evening or visiting the north and south of Phu Quoc in a full day trip. If you don't choose the beaches near your hotel in the town, there are some more remote beaches that are incredibly beautiful. It might be just you alone on the whole beach. Paradise!

Along the main road leading to the south of Phu Quoc, there are many joint-ventures and local companies investing in big and high class resorts, also an international airport. It seems to be one of those situations where development is necessary but I hope it doesn't ruin the simple atmosphere of the island. It's annoying getting covred in dust on the roads here but I suppose you can just dive into the water at the beach to wash it off!

Anyway, Phu Quoc is still a beautiful place and worth staying for a few weeks just to relax. For the next couple of years, even though the development is fast, it will be possible to have a great holiday here.

Phu Quoc Part IV

I joined the squid fishing tour for a few hours that evening and this is such a fun thing to do for experience. It cost only $15 including transport. Catching squid is not as easy as I thought and not a single person could catch anything for three and a half hours. There were two young girls working for the tour company who joined the trip with us and they vomited non-stop which made me feel sick as well. Anyway, the tour company prepared some squid porridge and some fresh fruit for everyone and it was really good.

One morning, I hired a motorbike with a driver to discover the north of Phu Quoc, including a fish sauce factory, national park, pepper farm, Nguyen Trung Truc hero temple and the Viet Nam - Cambodia border. Discovering Phu Quoc by motorbike is such a great way as I could stop at any place for photos, coffee or even the toilet. The downside was that my whole body got covered in red mud after travelling over those roads for a few hours.

I was really impressed by the wild beaches along the coastal roads. They all look so clean with white sand and virtually nobody around. I bought quite a few kgs of black and white pepper from the farm for me and my good friends from Hanoi. Phu Quoc's pepper is really famous throughout Viet Nam. The fish sauce factory was interesting as I saw hundreds of huge timber barrells which can hold over 15000 litres each. Fish sauce in Phu Quoc is acclaimed over the world and I eat it almost everyday at home with rice. Some of my friends asked me to bring back some but it's illegal to carry fish sauce on a plane in Vietnam.

To be continued

Phu Quoc Part III

I decided to take it easy, just laying on the hotel beach for the whole day then take a squid fishing trip in the evening for a few hours. The beach is really quiet not because I am the first one on the beach at 8am but that's just the atmostphere on Phu Quoc. There were only a few hotel staff hanging around cleaning and collecting rubbish and organizing chairs for hotel clients.

I saw a few people driving their small fishing boats setting their nets along the beach then they stopped in front of my hotel before starting to pull the net from two different places which were about 2 kms long between each other. They were working so hard but they smiled all the time which is really nice. I saw quite a few kids around both on the boat and on the beach with their families trying to help pick up the fish and put water into the big fishing boxes. I'm sure they should be at school but I suppose their parents need them to help earn the family income.

So, I spent around three hours watching the activity of these people fishing at the beach then I decided to hire a motorbike and drive into town, check out everything and take some photos around the central market. The market was very interesting with a variety of food, mostly seafood with lots of huge fish, prawns and squid. People were posing for me and kept asking me to take more photos of them. They were laughing out loud when I showed them their own faces. This doesn't happen much in Vietnam. Normally people object to me when I want to take their picture.

I also stopped at a fishing village near the market and it reminded me of the fishing villages near Nha Trang but much smaller. The standard of living around these areas seemed not very high as people rely mostly on fishing and working in the market or being a motorbike taxi but they seem very happy with their lives. There are lots of smile in Phu Quoc.

To be continued

Phu Quoc Part I

I woke up at 4 am and took a taxi to the airport to fly to Phu Quoc Island. This is one of the hottest places to go at the moment where tourism is not too developed yet. Most of the beaches here are clean with white sand and blue water and not big waves. Anyway, it was a pleasant flight and I arrived safely after 50 minutes from Saigon. Thanh Kieu Resort sent a member of their staff to pick me up from the airport and I don't think I could have found the hotel without him, because the roads here are confusing and he had to turn down many narrow lanes with just enough space for a car or a couple of motorbikes.

It's really quiet in Phu Quoc at 7 am and everything seemed still sleepy. I went down to the hotel's private beach for breakfast as I had to wait until 11. 30 am for my room. I met a German guy who was also waiting for his room. The receptionist came to the restaurant to meet me to give me some travel tips about Phu Quoc and he reckoned that we should hire a cab for half a day to discover the south of Phu Quoc for $15 each and I think that's not a bad idea. I agreed with that and started the trip with the stranger from Germany who is not really fluent in English but I was sure we would have a good day.

The car came in 20 minutes which was so fast as I thought it would take him at least 45 mintues to prepare. The diver was a really helpful and friendly man as he gave me all the information about Phu Quoc, where to go after the tour, what to eat and where are the best and cheapest places to eat, and any other places of interest.

To be continued

Saigon Dec, 2007 - Part II

While I was in the south, I took a day tour with Sinh Cafe to the Cu Chi tunnels and the Cao Dai temple. It cost me 80,000Vnd not including lunch. I was really impressed with the professional staff from the ticket sellers to the drivers and the tour guide. They were really helpful and sweet even though this is a cheap big tour group. The tour guide, Mr Truong, who is about 50 years old, is very funny, calm and full of interesting information about our destinations.

We stopped over at a workshop called Workability International for 20 minutes to check out the charity organization that helps people who suffered disabilities during the war( lost arms, eyes..) They made beautiful products such as eggshell paintings and lacquerware. It's an example of a charity doing a good job giving people skills to earn a living.

After a ninety minute bus journey, we arrived at the Cao Dai Temple. This is a really interesting place with a unique structure and interesting history. The building is an interesting mix of Catholic, Buddhist and Hindu architecture.

After the first half day visit Cao Dai Temple, we continued our trip to Cu Chi tunnels where the tour showed us how Vietnamese soldiers lived deep underground during the war. Everyone on the tour tried to go through the 60 metre tunnel but I didn't because I did it last time. There was an old couple from the US on the tour and they were surprised to see all of the very simple guns, narrow tunnels and the man said "That's why we lost". The whole group laughed out loud.

The people on the tour were very friendly, the guide was very helpful and sweet . Thank you very much for a good day.

To be continued

Christmas Holidays In Saigon

I have arrived in Saigon after over two hours flying from Hanoi with Pacific Airlines, a cheap airline joined with Qantas Airlines from Australia. The flight was delayed for 30 minutes but the journey was fine and I am now in Saigon for two weeks holiday for Christmas with my friends and my sister's family.

I love going down here because the weather is not cold during Christmas time while Hanoi is freezing and it's sunny today, great, I love it. The food in the south is great with lots of herbs and vegetables and also people understand my countryside accent because I'm from here. I also love being with my sister who is going to cook me good food and hang out with me in the shops and on the tennis courts.

I will try my best to update my blog as much as I can during the next two weeks. Hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Saigon Dec 2007 - Part I

I always wake up a bit late on my holidays and it's no different today as I woke up at 11 Am. After a few minutes washing up, I started my day with a bowl of Saigon hu tieu. There's nothing better than that and a beautiful sunny day. I wandered around for a few hours before stopping at Sasa Cafe in Bui Vien Street for lunch.Walking the whole morning is hard work. The food isn't bad here with the high light being the spanish fried rice with chicken, seafood, sausage and vegetable, fresh spring rolls and cold beer. What I always notice in Saigon is the friendly service, which is one of the differences between the north and the south. In Hanoi, sometimes the service in restaurants can be not very welcoming.

Later in the day, my sister and her friends invited me to Hoang Ty restaurant for dinner. This is my favorite place in Saigon which serves great steamed fish and deep fried fish with lots of different vegetables and herbs, rolled in special Trang Bang rice paper. We ordered these dishes plus Cu Chi beef which was recommended because it was very tender like western beef. We also ordered boiled pork, crab and prawn noodle and pig feet noodles. It was enough food for a whole army and we couldn't actually finish it all.

After dinner, we headed off to play tennis and we were all too full to play and not surprisingly, we couldn't move well to hit the ball!

To be continued.