{"id":7182,"date":"2026-02-21T09:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T09:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7182"},"modified":"2026-02-21T09:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T09:02:17","slug":"12-more-phu-quok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7182","title":{"rendered":"12. M\u00d2R\u00c8 PH\u00d9 QU\u00d2K"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving in Australia, there is always a risk of hitting an errant kangaroo (Robin did last week).\u00a0 In Vietnam, dragons are the problem.<\/p>\n

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Dragons … and motorbikes, of course!<\/p>\n

At the birds’ nest soup factory, they also had a sideline of Agarwood products.\u00a0 Agarwood is a highly valuable, aromatic, and resinous heartwood produced by Aquilaria trees in Southeast Asia when infected by certain species of fungus.\u00a0 It is considered one of the most expensive natural products in the world, often called “wood of the gods”.\u00a0 Nowadays, Aquilaria trees are farmed commercially and artificially infected.\u00a0 However only a small percentage of the cultivated trees produce the Agarwood.\u00a0 And for best results, the trees have to be grown for maybe 30 years …\u00a0 I bet they end up with a lot of tree wood!<\/p>\n

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At the pearl farms, Ben was able to choose an oyster.\u00a0 Both of them contained a pearl when opened.\u00a0 But neither of them was he allowed to keep!<\/p>\n

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Of course, pearls were for sale as you might imagine!\u00a0 Thousands of them.\u00a0 White, yellow, pink and black.\u00a0 Necklaces, bangles, earrings and brooches.\u00a0 Little ones and ostentatious ones.\u00a0 You name it they had it – and if they didn’t, they’d make it for you in 20 minutes!\u00a0 This was the most expensive item I could find.\u00a0 Competitively priced at 1.5 trillion dong – a snip at \u00a342.4 million!<\/p>\n

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Luckily, Glenda said it was a bit too flash for her liking!\u00a0 But we did end up with a necklace and matching earrings!\u00a0 But not on the first visit.\u00a0 We had to return another time to finalise the deal!<\/p>\n

We had the opportunity to see the “real” Vietnamese life in the main town of the island, previously known as Duong Dong, now, confusingly, as Phu Quoc.\u00a0 The administrative centre of the island.\u00a0 At the entrance of the harbour, on a rocky outcrop, stands a tiny temple.\u00a0 Dinh Cau.<\/p>\n

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The history of this temple dates back to the 17th century.\u00a0 Legend has it that back then, the local fishermen used to face harsh storms and never return from the sea.\u00a0 One day, a rock formation emerged at the mouth of the Duong Dong River, offering safe passage.\u00a0 Seeing it as a divine sign, the locals built a shrine here.<\/p>\n

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Even today, some fishermen visit to say prayers before heading out to sea in their highly colourful boats.<\/p>\n

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We did venture into the market area which runs along the river bank a little further upstream.\u00a0 This is the site of a famous night market.\u00a0 In my view, it’s probably much better to visit at night when the rubbish and, indeed, the rats are less visible.\u00a0 Best of all might be during a power cut, late in the evening when there’s a new moon!\u00a0 To be fair, this was the only really mucky place we saw on the island.<\/p>\n

At the second pearly place, the Ngoc Hien Pearl Farm alongside the “pearls for sale emporium”, there was a HUGE display of salvaged pots, plates, cutlery and all things ship-wrecky.<\/p>\n

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There was also a massive collection of fossilised??? giant clam shells.<\/p>\n

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I guess these things were collected by early pearl fishing divers.\u00a0 This is part of the collection of broken dishes, not good enough for the main displays.<\/p>\n

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Out the back door, the boys discovered we were on the beach …<\/p>\n

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… almost immediately under the flight-path of planes landing at the airport …\u00a0 Noisy!<\/p>\n

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At the north end of the island, there is another theme park with rides, flumes and a huge aquarium with a surprise show.\u00a0 This is Grand World Phu Quoc aka “The Sleepless City”.<\/p>\n

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Glenda filmed me for ages waiting for me to fall off the wave!<\/p>\n

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The aquarium located in a huge turtle, obviously, as they would do …<\/p>\n

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It has lots of other aquatic super-stars.\u00a0 Shoaling ones …<\/p>\n

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… big ones …<\/p>\n

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… and little ones.<\/p>\n

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And during the show, some surprise visitors arrived in the main tank …<\/p>\n

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Our last visit on the island was to Starfish Beach at Rach Vem.\u00a0 Located in the far north of the island, it is a bit of a journey.\u00a0 About as far from our hotel as is possible.\u00a0 When the road stops we took a sandy track for a couple of kilometres.\u00a0 Then out on a long and very rickety pier …<\/p>\n

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… from where a motor boat took us a similar distance further to the west.\u00a0 Onto the beach – with a brief hesitation on a “non-kiss-bridge” …<\/p>\n

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And there they were.\u00a0 As predicted.\u00a0 Starfish!<\/p>\n

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As the sun set, it was back on the boat …<\/p>\n

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… to our starting point and waiting taxi.\u00a0 Just as night fell.<\/p>\n

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So that draws our visit to Phu Quoc to a close.\u00a0 Tomorrow it’s a flight to Ho Chi Minh City and further tangellations with zillions of motorbikes!<\/p>\n

Before I end this episode, I thought I would show you the power of the “Magic Eraser” on my phone.\u00a0 The\u00a0 inside of the temple at the harbour mouth in Phu Quoc (as seen above), was partly blocked by a huge safe for collecting donations from devotees.\u00a0 Magic Eraser not only removed the safe, but inserted what it “thought” would have been behind the it.\u00a0 In amazing detail.\u00a0 Even down to a bunch of yellow flowers, based on a couple of petals showing in the original.\u00a0 I guess it got the idea for the right-hand edge of the alter from the left side.\u00a0 See the before and after pictures below.\u00a0 Very impressive.\u00a0 Well, I’m impressed anyway.<\/p>\n

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Now you can’t trust any of my pictures!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driving in Australia, there is always a risk of hitting an errant kangaroo (Robin did last week).\u00a0 In Vietnam, dragons are the problem. Dragons … and motorbikes, of course! At the birds’ nest soup factory, they also had a sideline… <\/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-7182","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\/7182","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=7182"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7224,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182\/revisions\/7224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}