{"id":7148,"date":"2026-02-15T12:56:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T12:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7148"},"modified":"2026-02-15T12:56:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T12:56:47","slug":"11-phu-quoc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7148","title":{"rendered":"11. PH\u00d9 QU\u00d2C."},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaving Sapa, we got glimpses of the famous steeply terraced rice fields …<\/p>\n

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We also discovered that the short-cutting bridge which was closed on the way up four days ago is now open.\u00a0 It did save us the twenty minutes as predicted.\u00a0 But we lost them, plus about an hour coming into Hanoi.\u00a0 Horrendous traffic returning to the city on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n

When we arrived at Hanoi airport the next day, for our 13.20 flight to Ph\u00f9 Qu\u00f2c, we discovered it was not on the departure board.\u00a0 No flight was leaving for Ph\u00f9 Qu\u00f2c at 13.20 … or any time later, come to that.\u00a0 DIFFICULT!\u00a0 We decided to try and get on the 12.35 flight to the same destination.\u00a0 Luckily, there were seats.\u00a0 OUR seats.\u00a0 The airline had rescheduled our flight 45 minutes early – without telling us!\u00a0 Lucky we got to the airport nice and early!<\/p>\n

Row six.\u00a0 Fully occupied by the family.<\/p>\n

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The whole area around our hotel is an artificial space where “native Vietnam” has been excluded.\u00a0 A weird sort of artificially grand, and totally out of character, atmosphere has been developed.\u00a0 Almost “Disneyesk”.\u00a0 The hotels and restaurants could be anywhere in the world.\u00a0 Even the well organised, evening street market is unlike anything else in the country.\u00a0 The “town” is known as The Sunset Town (Th\u1ecb Tr\u00e2n Ho\u00e0ng H\u00f4n).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Founded by L\u00ea Vi\u1ebft Lam, Sun Group created this Mediterranean-inspired town in southern Ph\u00f9 Qu\u00f2c, featuring iconic landmarks like the Kiss Bridge …<\/p>\n

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That’s enough of that!<\/p>\n

There is also the Central Village Clock Tower …<\/p>\n

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… and La Festa Ph\u00f9 Qu\u00f2c hotel.\u00a0 Our hotel for the duration of our stay on the island.\u00a0 Our pool by night and by day …<\/p>\n

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Six nights a week there is a spectacular “son et lumi\u00e8re” show on the huge stage in front of our rooms.\u00a0 The light show is projected onto water screens and jets of water.<\/p>\n

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The whole show concludes with a massive firework display.\u00a0 And this happens more than 300 times a year!<\/p>\n

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But that’s only the late evening show.\u00a0 Before dark, leading up to sunset, there is an aquatic display.\u00a0 Six fly-boarders, and numerous jetskis perform to crowds on the beach and on the Kiss Bridge.\u00a0 Attached to their own un-manned jet-ski, the flyers emerge from the water and “fly” up to six metres in the air.\u00a0 Good balance and no imagination seem to be the main requisites for that job!<\/p>\n

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(Our hotel rooms with a view are highlighted in the yellow circle.)<\/p>\n

After sunset, there’s another show with jetskis, flyboarders AND fireworks for paying crowds on the beach.\u00a0 We get all three shows free on our balconies – each day!<\/p>\n

A hundred metres from the hotel there is the boarding point for the longest cable car ride in the world.\u00a0 From The Sunset Town, the Hon Thom Cable Car spans four islands.\u00a0 It holds the Guinness World Record for the longest non-stop, three-rope cable car system.\u00a0 It stretches nearly 8 kilometres (7,899.9 metres) from the southern tip of Phu Quoc over the sea to Hon Thom Island.\u00a0 But what a daft measurement!\u00a0 By my calculation, an eight kilometre long steel cable will expand by 9.6 centimetres for every degree Celsius increase in temperature.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 Of course their tape measures would have stretched as well, but we are not going there!\u00a0 (And, BTW, it was Google AI’s calculation of expansion – not mine!)<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The Fansipan Cableway was, of course, the one we rode at Sapa!<\/p>\n

Approaching the first pylon on H\u00f2n D\u00f9a …<\/p>\n

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… and the second on H\u00f2n R\u00f2i<\/p>\n

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… and coming to earth on Hon Thom.<\/p>\n

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We get a panoramic view of the An Thoi archipelago in the distance.\u00a0 A new beach resort under construction can be seen at the bottom right of the photo.<\/p>\n

The main attraction of the Sun World Hon Thom Nature Park is Aquatopia, a huge water park.<\/p>\n

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Massive doses of water chucked on the kids at intervals.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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A lazy river …<\/span><\/p>\n

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… and some very slippery steps!\u00a0 The significance of the latter may emerge later!<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to use the Vietnamese accents where possible.\u00a0 However, I’m now officially giving up!\u00a0 But I have learnt a new word – “diacritic”.\u00a0 I’ve always called a “diacritic” an “accent”.\u00a0 I thought they meant exactly the same thing!\u00a0 However, it appears that while all accents are diacritics, not all diacritics (for eample, the cedilla) are considered accents.<\/p>\n

The Vietnamese alphabet contains 29 letters, including 7 letters using four diacritics: \u0103, \u00e2, \u00ea, \u00f4, \u01a1, \u01b0, and \u0111.\u00a0 There are an additional 5 diacritics used to designate tone (as in \u00e0, \u00e1, \u1ea3, \u00e3, and \u1ea1).\u00a0 The complex vowel system and the large number of letters with diacritics, which can stack twice on the same letter (e.g. nh\u1ea5t meaning ‘first’), makes it easy to get confused!<\/p>\n

But that’s enough of that …<\/p>\n

At the airport when we arrived on the island,\u00a0 we were “picked up” by a driver of a luxury minibus.<\/p>\n

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We cancelled two pre-booked Grab cabs (Uber equivalents) and piled into his bus.\u00a0 We then subsequently used him for our mass transports round the island.\u00a0 We had him on speed dial and basically booked him by the day.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The island is well geared to this sort of tourist activity.\u00a0 As we pile out of the bus at any of the attractions we all get a lanyard with our (randomly allocated) tour number.\u00a0 The driver gets a free coffee (or equivalent) and credit for bringing potential customers to the venue.\u00a0 If any group member actually purchases anything, he also gets an entry into an annual draw.\u00a0 And the prize is … a bag of rice!\u00a0 One assumes it’s a substantially big bag, not your one kilo packet from Asda!\u00a0 I also suspect that it is the bus owner who gets any financial rewards and the driver gets the rice!\u00a0 If he wins the raffle, that is!<\/p>\n

At the fish oil factory, tens of quadrillions of anchovies are salted, fermented and stashed away in massive wooden vats.\u00a0 For a year.\u00a0 A bit stinky!\u00a0 And then the juice is squished out, collected and bottled. All offers of tasting samples were gratefully declined (except by Linda!).\u00a0 Apparently our island is the nation’s prime spot for production of this “delectable” product.<\/p>\n

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Rather scarily, they also produce fish sauce wine …<\/p>\n

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The outside loos were much appreciated.\u00a0 After three weeks in the country, I’ve eventually learnt the Vietnamese word for “men”!\u00a0 Glenda is still relying on the rule “Ladies to the right – because they always are!”\u00a0 (She says!)<\/p>\n

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I think that’s a good place to end this episode!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 It did save us the twenty minutes… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vietnam-and-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7148"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7188,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148\/revisions\/7188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}