Tapp's Travels

Leaving Sapa, we got glimpses of the famous steeply terraced rice fields …

We also discovered that the short-cutting bridge which was closed on the way up four days ago is now open.  It did save us the twenty minutes as predicted.  But we lost them, plus about an hour coming into Hanoi.  Horrendous traffic returning to the city on Sunday evening.

When we arrived at Hanoi airport the next day, for our 13.20 flight to Phù Quòc, we discovered it was not on the departure board.  No flight was leaving for Phù Quòc at 13.20 … or any time later, come to that.  DIFFICULT!  We decided to try and get on the 12.35 flight to the same destination.  Luckily, there were seats.  OUR seats.  The airline had rescheduled our flight 45 minutes early – without telling us!  Lucky we got to the airport nice and early!

Row six.  Fully occupied by the family.

The whole area around our hotel is an artificial space where “native Vietnam” has been excluded.  A weird sort of artificially grand, and totally out of character, atmosphere has been developed.  Almost “Disneyesk”.  The hotels and restaurants could be anywhere in the world.  Even the well organised, evening street market is unlike anything else in the country.  The “town” is known as The Sunset Town (Thị Trân Hoàng Hôn).  It is a very neat and tidy space – the brainchild of the Sun Group, a major Vietnamese property developer known for luxury resorts, entertainment complexes, and infrastructure projects.  Founded by Lê Viết Lam, Sun Group created this Mediterranean-inspired town in southern Phù Quòc, featuring iconic landmarks like the Kiss Bridge …

That’s enough of that!

There is also the Central Village Clock Tower …

… and La Festa Phù Quòc hotel.  Our hotel for the duration of our stay on the island.  Our pool by night and by day …

Six nights a week there is a spectacular “son et lumière” show on the huge stage in front of our rooms.  The light show is projected onto water screens and jets of water.

The whole show concludes with a massive firework display.  And this happens more than 300 times a year!

But that’s only the late evening show.  Before dark, leading up to sunset, there is an aquatic display.  Six fly-boarders, and numerous jetskis perform to crowds on the beach and on the Kiss Bridge.  Attached to their own un-manned jet-ski, the flyers emerge from the water and “fly” up to six metres in the air.  Good balance and no imagination seem to be the main requisites for that job!

(Our hotel rooms with a view are highlighted in the yellow circle.)

After sunset, there’s another show with jetskis, flyboarders AND fireworks for paying crowds on the beach.  We get all three shows free on our balconies – each day!

A hundred metres from the hotel there is the boarding point for the longest cable car ride in the world.  From The Sunset Town, the Hon Thom Cable Car spans four islands.  It holds the Guinness World Record for the longest non-stop, three-rope cable car system.  It stretches nearly 8 kilometres (7,899.9 metres) from the southern tip of Phu Quoc over the sea to Hon Thom Island.  But what a daft measurement!  By my calculation, an eight kilometre long steel cable will expand by 9.6 centimetres for every degree Celsius increase in temperature.  So if the Guinness adjudicators had waited for the temperature to rise by just 1.04 degrees C, the cables would indeed have been 7,900 metres long!  Of course their tape measures would have stretched as well, but we are not going there!  (And, BTW, it was Google AI’s calculation of expansion – not mine!)

For information, before the Hon Thom Cable Car was completed, the Fansipan Legend Cableway held records for its length and height, but the Hon Thom system surpassed it.  The Fansipan Cableway was, of course, the one we rode at Sapa!

Approaching the first pylon on Hòn Dùa …

… and the second on Hòn Ròi

… and coming to earth on Hon Thom.

We get a panoramic view of the An Thoi archipelago in the distance.  A new beach resort under construction can be seen at the bottom right of the photo.

The main attraction of the Sun World Hon Thom Nature Park is Aquatopia, a huge water park.

Massive doses of water chucked on the kids at intervals. 

A lazy river …

… and some very slippery steps!  The significance of the latter may emerge later!

I’ve been trying to use the Vietnamese accents where possible.  However, I’m now officially giving up!  But I have learnt a new word – “diacritic”.  I’ve always called a “diacritic” an “accent”.  I thought they meant exactly the same thing!  However, it appears that while all accents are diacritics, not all diacritics (for eample, the cedilla) are considered accents.

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including 7 letters using four diacritics: ă, â, ê, ô, ơ, ư, and đ.  There are an additional 5 diacritics used to designate tone (as in à, á, ả, ã, and ạ).  The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. nhất meaning ‘first’), makes it easy to get confused!

But that’s enough of that …

At the airport when we arrived on the island,  we were “picked up” by a driver of a luxury minibus.

We cancelled two pre-booked Grab cabs (Uber equivalents) and piled into his bus.  We then subsequently used him for our mass transports round the island.  We had him on speed dial and basically booked him by the day.  During our five day stay on Phu Quoc he took us to a pepper farm, a fish sauce factory, two pearl farms, a birds’ nest soup factory, a jewellery store, a second water park, a “starfish beach” and finally he will take us back to the airport.

The island is well geared to this sort of tourist activity.  As we pile out of the bus at any of the attractions we all get a lanyard with our (randomly allocated) tour number.  The driver gets a free coffee (or equivalent) and credit for bringing potential customers to the venue.  If any group member actually purchases anything, he also gets an entry into an annual draw.  And the prize is … a bag of rice!  One assumes it’s a substantially big bag, not your one kilo packet from Asda!  I also suspect that it is the bus owner who gets any financial rewards and the driver gets the rice!  If he wins the raffle, that is!

At the fish oil factory, tens of quadrillions of anchovies are salted, fermented and stashed away in massive wooden vats.  For a year.  A bit stinky!  And then the juice is squished out, collected and bottled. All offers of tasting samples were gratefully declined (except by Linda!).  Apparently our island is the nation’s prime spot for production of this “delectable” product.

Rather scarily, they also produce fish sauce wine …

The outside loos were much appreciated.  After three weeks in the country, I’ve eventually learnt the Vietnamese word for “men”!  Glenda is still relying on the rule “Ladies to the right – because they always are!”  (She says!)

I think that’s a good place to end this episode!