Wayne Kerr’s Phu Quoc Expeditions - Vietnam

[Fabian]

This really is a great thread.

[MeMock]

Wayne, what sort of business are you in? (apart from the drinking business)

[sabang]

Well you've sold me- I really have to visit this Island.
Great TR.

[Milkman]

This is a great thread.

Wayne, I live in Saigon.

I've never tried dog meat.

Could you post or PM just the general location of where to eat dog in Saigon?

I could ask someone else, but hardly anybody has tried it, therefore they don't know where places are (and where the good ones are).


Cheers to this great thread. Nice pics, great info!

[Wayne Kerr]

Originally Posted by MeMock

Wayne, what sort of business are you in? (apart from the drinking business)

I’m a fish monger – not very exciting but I get to eat lots of seafood and drink lots of beer .

Originally Posted by Milkman

Could you post or PM just the general location of where to eat dog in Saigon?

Sure will Milky, will try to get a Vietnamese buddy to sketch a map and I'll post it up here .

Been a bit slow getting the rest of the Phu Quoc pics in here. Got a surprise visit last week from my younger brother so I've been flat out keeping him out of too much trouble - jeez it would be great to be young, single and have a massive disposable income again.



Apart from great memories of getting roaring drunk in way too many bars, a very late night in an infamous bondage bar, and a long day hunting for him around Pattaya after he got lost, all I've got to show for his visit is a freezer full of Australian lamb that he smuggled in and Robert Barretts latest book. I'd be happy to send the book onto any Les Norton fans out there.


^ Aussie lamb chops in Wayne Kerr's freezer



^ Robert Barretts latest book - I guess maybe only the Australians on here would be familiar with his stuff

[Wayne Kerr]

Anyway, back to the road …

After the long liquid lunch on the island we were off for a spot of fishing and a swim. It was early afternoon and the only thing biting was squid, so we decided to head off to a secluded bay for a quick swim to sober up. Here’s a few photos and a clip of a bit of video I took of one of the reefs.


^ Looking back at the commune


^ Not far offshore we bumped into some fishermen catching squid – we were going to join in but thought they probably needed the bloody things more than us and took off for a swim instead


^ Some of the small fishing boats off Phu Quoc Island


^ Apparently this bloke pretty much lives on his boat. He had his 2 kids on there helping him – they were both younger than 10.


^ Bigger boat with heaps of blokes catching the suckers


^ The secluded coral reef area we found for a swim


^ The water was so clear you could see the different types of corals from the boat – these reefs are very, very rarely dived on


^ Another pic of the secluded coral reef area we found off Phu Quoc Island


^ The beach looked absolutely awesome but we didn’t have enough time to go ashore and explore - next time hey!

I put the camera away at this time and started screwing around with my mates video camera and a dodgy waterproof housing we had for it – here’s a clip of some video of the reef there .

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, great thread. One question:

First time I visited Vietnam was back in the 80's. We went down to Vung Tau to have a look at the beach. The thing that struck me was all the places along the main highway that rented bathing suits.

Is that still going on or has the economy reached the point where people can afford their own?

[Wayne Kerr]

^ lol

I think those days are well gone - I've managed to get there every few months for the past few years. Each time I go there I am amazed at how richer everyone seems to be getting. But as for the bathing suits - we just wore our underpants we were so pissed .

[dirtydog]

Originally Posted by Wayne Kerr

But as for the bathing suits - we just wore our underpants, we are Aussies .

Class, real class

[Wayne Kerr]

After the swim we headed back to the commune to drop some guys off and pick a few up who wanted to come back to Phu Quoc Island proper for a few drinks – it would be very, very easy to settle into island life in southern Vietnam. I could probably just about afford it too. Here’s a few pics of the trip back to port .


^ Long deserted beaches everywhere – here’s one which tickled my fancy


^ Another deserted Phu Quoc Island beach


^ A nice big boat anchored off the commune beach


^ I guess they get used to the smell of squid drying on the nets after a while


^ Picking up a young lass that was coming back to have dinner with us


^ Another fisherman’s hut out on the water


^ Leaving the commune – hopefully I’ll be back there soon


^ Arriving back at port


^ We were quickly rushed off to one of the locals homes for more drinking and sticky rice – it was just a few days before the Chinese New Year and apparently they like to fill any guests up with lots of sticky rice and vodka at this time – actually when I come to think of it things are pretty much the same as this all the time in Vietnam .


^ Then it was drinks by the pool before kicking onto the massage that the local fellows we were with recommend


^ This is the card for the best massage place on Phu Quoc. At 50,000 dong per massage (say 120 baht for 1hr), and given the fact that all the girls were super attractive and quite fun to joke around with, I deemed it necessary to have 3 separate massages – I was not disappointed .

[Wayne Kerr]

The last day of the trip turned into a beauty. I reckon that any trip in southeast Asia is incomplete if you don’t have some sort of memorable encounter with a pig and find a dick of some strange critter in a market somewhere. Anyway I wasn’t to be disappointed this trip, but the bloody pig this time brought on a nasty case of post inebriated anxiety about the prospect of one day having to return to my homeland and put up looking at all the big barge arse sheilas there. As for the animal dick I stumbled upon … well that just scared the clappers out of me.


^ The scene I came across when stumbling up all bleary eyed for breakfast on my last day – at first I thought my hosts had taken the good old Vietnamese hospitality too far and we were going to do “Moo Hun” Vietnam style, but I soon realised it was a religious offering .


^ View from the back-end of the pig – apparently the sucker weighed in at 105kg. This got me thinking about some news I received recently about one of my ex-girlfriends in Australia that recently hit the 100kg mark – shit I remember her as a hot, leggy blonde that used to go surfing with us and went like the clappers on the work bench. Anyway these strange thoughts ended up being all too much for a hungover Wayne Kerr and I decided it was best to skip breakfast and get our morning meeting over and done with so I could have a beer as soon as possible .


^ Local commune office on the east coast of Phu Quoc Island – I spent a few hours here before ducking off to a local fishing village to find a beer and a bite to eat


^ Small fishing village on the east coast of Phu Quoc Island we went to for breakfast - cop the serenity


^ This lady had crabs


^ We found these lovely looking marine snails which we thought would go down best with beer at 9.30am in the morning


^ Start of breakfast – the idea was to eat all the guts out of the snails and put the empty shells in the bowl in the middle


^ Half a dozen beers later


^ The lady selling the shells also had some live seahorses – Vietnamese “Vitamin V”


^ We also lucked upon this dugong dick – all I could think of when I saw this sucker was that I was very lucky indeed that I hadn’t been born a female dugong. Note the barbed head with the large testes sewn on down below. The only wanted about US$2 for this .

[Wayne Kerr]

After breakfast I had a few spare hours before my flight so I decided to see some sights. The headland temple in town was the highlight. I also checked out the “1000 Star Hotel” for the Kerr family trip there in July. The 1000 Star is bloody cheap at about US$10 a night, but the rooms are set off the beach a bit and I’m pretty sure we’ll be hitting the Kim Hoa beach front bungalows again next time around.


^ The headland temple on Phu Quoc Island


^ View from up on the headland looking north


^ View of the fishing port – unfortunately my mobile phone camera really let me down taking the pictures from up there


^ Tried to stand right out on the cliff to get a good pic of the beach and boats but this bloody tree got in my way


^ Some great rock pools around the headland – I’ll be going back there with Wayne Jnr in July


^ The shrine in the temple


^ View from rooms at the 1000 Star Hotel on Phu Quoc Island – this seemed very quiet and relaxed and at US$10 a night it would be a bargain


^ Rooms at the 1000 Star are very basic but you’d probably spend most of your time on the beach anyway


^ View of the beach from inside the open air restaurant at the 1000 Star

[Wayne Kerr]

We really got caught up in the Lunar New Year (Tet) celebrations over lunch. The beer really hadn’t worn off after breakfast, and since my flight to Bangkok wasn’t until 9.30pm there was really no point in holding back beer wise. Following our 1pm flight from Phu Quoc I had about 6 hours drinking time in Saigon, and since the airport was so hectic with the overseas Vietnamese coming home for New Year we pissed off to my mates home and drank all manner of things. Anyway not many photos from here on in, but there is one of Ms. Phu Quoc competition that you may like.


^ Departures at Phu Quoc Airport – they are always run off their feet


^ The main tourist type product at the airport is the good old Phu Quoc fish sauce. This stuff is actually quite tasty and nothing like the shit made in Thailand. I hate Thai fish sauce with a passion but the Phu Quoc stuff is tasty and has a very high protein content – this is excellent if your kids are into the stuff. Anyway the only problem is that you can’t take it on the plane and have to order it in the airport then pick the bottles up in Saigon. It is so bloody complicated that no one actually does it. The airport is also a great place to buy a stuffed marine turtles just in case you need another endangered species to put up on the trophy shelf – I’d buy one except the fine for bring one into Thailand is about 500,000 baht.


^ With all the pictures of beaches and stuff I didn't take too many of the Vietnamese girls. I think I mentioned earlier that it is generally thought that the good looking Viet girls are far better looking than the good looking Thai girls. This is a rule which I previously thought only applied to Hanoi, but there were loads of super hotties on Phu Quoc Island too. Anyway while we were having a few beers at Phu Quoc Airport I snapped this shot out of the local tourism magazine to remind of how attractive many of the girls are there.

[William]

Vietnam Airlines skids off HCM runway

Hanoi (dpa) - A Vietnam Airlines plane skidded off the runway when its brakes failed during an emergency landing in Ho Chi Minh City, but all 70 passengers and crew were unhurt, an official said Friday.

The ATR-210 plane en route to southern Phu Quoc Island had to return to Tan Son Nhut Airport in the city 15 minutes after takeoff Thursday because the hydraulic-system pressure had dropped below normal, according to a release from the airline.

The plane, carrying 65 passengers and 5 crew members, landed properly but could not stop in time and skidded 25 metres off the runway due to the malfunction of the brakes, which were powered by the hydraulic system.

"One of the valves of the hydraulic system had broken, leaving the plane unable to retract its landing gears so it had to return," Tran Van Mai, the state carrier's Ho Chi Minh City maintenance director, said Friday by telephone.

"It might have been a mistake by the manufacturer," Mai said, adding that the plane is only five-years-old.

Vietnam Airlines has had a string of technical problems this year, including three emergency landings in February during the heavy lunar new year travel season.

The state carrier also had a turbulent year in 2006, with a series of scandals, including allegations that it paid millions of dollars for the wrong kind of engines for its jets and that some of its staff have been involved in drug and cigarette smuggling operations.

[Marmite the Dog]

Originally Posted by Tran Van Mai

"It might have been a mistake by the manufacturer," Mai said, adding that the plane is only five-years-old.

Or maybe the fact that it has never seen a qualified mechanic in any of those 5 years...

[ChiangMai noon]

Truly outstanding thread.
should be compulsory reading.

[7urbo]

terrific thread WK!! thinking of heading back to asia not too far in the future with the wifey who is vietnamese