Wayne Kerr’s Phu Quoc Expeditions - Vietnam

[Wayne Kerr]

The BBQ put on at the bar each night is first class … they charge the equivalent of about 500 baht for all the beer and seafood you can drink.


^ A young bloke cooking up a storm


^ I reckon there’d be more than 500 bahts worth of seafood on the grill but I reckon I must have finished double that … and all this before they even brought the crabs out .


^ There seems to be an endless supply of ultra cheap blue swimmer crabs on the island

[Wayne Kerr]

Anyway things got a little messy towards the end of the night. One of the young waitresses offered to take me for a ride around town on her motorbike. She ducked off to doll herself up a bit and on her return I realised things could get interesting.

Here's a vid I pulled off whilst sitting on the back of her bike ... I'm really going to have to improve my video technique to prevent shadows ending up in wrong spots again .

[dirtydog]

I think she sussed what you were trying to video

[Wayne Kerr]

Got some better ones later, although I recall your warning earlier on in this thread

Anyway, back to the road …

I guess one can’t go about having fun with young sexpots all night and not expect to have to do some work the next day to replenish the bank account … so the next morning it was up at 6am to piss off to the small island commune I visited at the start of this thread.

With the onset of the southwest monsoon the entire community has shifted to the northeast side of the small island, and I think somehow they treat this place as a temporary abode as it is a friggin filthy shithole. It also where all the fishermen's knocking shops are. Fortunately my favourite restaurant was in easy walking distance. I guess pictures are more interesting than words so here goes:


^ Fishing port right on the southern tip of the island … just a stones throw to the hundreds of small islands to the south of the main island


^ A nice boat anchored up off the commune I was visiting



^ The coastline looks friggin awesome but on closer inspection you'll be disappointed


^ It quickly came apparent that the locals treated this place about as good as the Pattaya City Government treats Jomtien Beach


^ Wasn’t much better up the other direction


^ Things got worse as we walked up into the commune


^ A shot back down to the coast once you get past the small market and move into the knocking shop area.


^ I’ve spent a fair bit of time in small southeast Asian fishing communities over the years so its pretty easy to spot the local knocking shops … the girl on the left was playing with condom full of water and showed me how she’d fellate it … when I pulled the camera out she hid it with her right hand under her legs. According to my Vietnamese mates the going rate is about US$3 for the fishermen.


^ Fortunately my favourite restaurant was only about 200 metres from the shore (about in the centre of the island). Those who have read this from the start you may recognise these blokes. This time they had cold beer for me, but still it was expected that I down at least 20 glasses of the local rice wine with them .


^ When we stumbled back down onto the beach I looked up and thought this could be a lovely place if they cleaned up all the shit .


^ When we were cruising off this fish trader wanted us to buy this endangered species of sea turtle of him ... only wanted equivalent of $15

[Wayne Kerr]

^ All I can remember (well all my camera can remember) after getting on the boat was finding my way onto the back of another motorbike

[dirtydog]

Looks a bit better than the motorbike taxi drivers down the end of my road

[Marmite the Dog]

Did she sell you her starfish?

[Wayne Kerr]

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Did she sell you her starfish?

Starfish ... she was more like a mermaid on speed

Anyway, back to the road ...

After about a week at the Saigon-Phu Quoc Resort and too many pissy nights, my plan was to spend another week exploring some of the Island's coast by boat during the day. First step was to find a cheap hotel to hang my hat. The Kim Phung Hotel in the town centre looked good enough and was a bargain at US$8 a night. I ended up checking out of the place after a week and the total bill was less than 1 night at the resort.


^ The Kim Phung Hotel in downtown Phu Quoc


^ The rooms are up the back behind the hotel ... note to myself to be more careful of the steps when stumbling back home pissed next time .


^ Lovely little courtyard ... most guests sit around out here at night drinking and eating .


^ Right in the middle of town in close proximity to plenty of cheap restaurants and beer shops ... a box of 24 cold cans of beer goes for about the same as 3 at the resort .


^ Room was small but clean and had air-con. Was about 40 degrees C most days and due to power restrictions on the island most places, including small hotels like this were without power from about 5.00pm-8.00pm ... this resulted in most people sitting around outside drinking cold beer until the aircon started working again.


^ Shots of dunnies seem quite common on here - so here's the bathroom at the Kim Phung .

[buad hai]

Lovely photos. Thanks again.

[Wayne Kerr]

The hotel move really took it out of me so I decided more seafood and beer was in order to replenish my energy levels. Found this great little restaurant … you buy your own seafood in the nearby market and they cook it up for you for next to nothing. Seems they make their money out of beer sales mainly.


^ Was so bloody hot an humid there at the time that I couldn’t have cared less if I fell in … only about a metre deep anyway


^ I felt like some mud crab … this one proved a little difficult to tie up


^ More snails … really wish they were more readily available in Bangkok


^ Snails on the table


^ Some of the swimming crab we had ... they cooked these alive on the table next to us .

[dirtydog]

He looks a bit of an angry bugger, then again I don't blame him

[sabang]

Now thats a crab! Those swimmers are too fiddly.

[Wayne Kerr]

Originally Posted by dirtydog

He looks a bit of an angry bugger, then again I don't blame him

Nearly got me he did ... tried to grab him with one hand, a camera in the other, ended up having to give him one of my flip flops to play with for a while to calm him down. Think I got some of that on video. Sabang, I find serious crab eaters either love one or the other ... personally I prefer the blue swimmers. I eat so many of them that a muddie is good for a change every now and then.

Anyway, back to the road ...

Next day was off to sea ... was keen to explore a few places along the east coast. Here’s a few pics:


^ A shot of M.V. Wayne Kerr's wheelhouse


^ A great view looking south down the east coast of Phu Quoc Island


^ Took this pic of the GPS to remind where we went in case things got too pissy later on the day


^ The Vietnamese are pretty much the same as the Thais when it comes to food, i.e. they are always thinking of it. These boats looked a good a source of food as any so we found ourselves steaming towards them before we actually got any work done.


^ The crew were surprised to see a big dopey looking farang taking their pictures


^ They were mending the nets so I grabbed a net needle and helped out for a while. They seemed quite pleased with this and offered us a bag of squid in return … it’s one of the only times the skills I learnt during my misspent youth have paid off.


^ They were really pissing themselves at the farang fella fixing the nets with them


^ Next step was to get the suckers cleaned up a bit


^ Still cleaning the squid … these suckers have got heaps of that black stuff in em


^ Then they were onto the stove with some fish and other stuff we had


^ This was the end result … not bad but I wish we’d spent a little longer getting all the black shit out of the squid


^ Before we’d finish eating the lads cracked a “bag” of rice wine … they had about 10 small bags like this to get through in the afternoon


^ Then they called the local border army patrol bloke on the radio and invited him over to join us … man this guy could drink


^ A long swim was in order to help sober up later that afternoon – if you look closely you can see our snorkels

[sabang]

Mate, whatever it is you do for a living, I reckon I'd be your Gopher for free.

[Wayne Kerr]

Originally Posted by sabang

I reckon I'd be your Gopher for free.

It aint all beer and skittles you know ... sometimes I have to drink wine . Just see below.



^ This day led to another bloody dinner of some hot pot of all manner of strange critters and more beer




^ The wine that night came out of a big plastic drum into empty JW Black bottle – it was apparently made of some unusual forest fruit, very strong, and I was very happy once it was finished so I could get back to my beer

[Wayne Kerr]

Next few days I was up around the north of the island. Some more pics.


^ This pic is dead in between Phu Quoc Island and the Cambodian coast. The southern tip of land you can see on the left of the pic is the most northerly tip of Phu Quoc Island … the land on the right is Cambodia’s Kampot province.


^ Apparently there is a big mountain on the Cambodia side … but these lovely looking clouds covered it up for the whole time I was there


^ The coastline up around there is mostly untouched apart from a few small shacks


^ The commune of one of the guys with me was up there and we were invited in for lunch … locally caught sea prawns, some of which were still kicking. They caught them by walking along the beach with a cast net


^ To save fresh water they cooked the prawns up in coconut water … they were the delicious. I thought it was going to be an alcohol free lunch until this showed up.


^ 20 litres of rice wine … it was at this stage I was starting to get worried about what was going to happen next as I was one of the only farang ever to visit the commune and some of the local elders had arrived to come and drink with me.


^ Anyway I did my best to line my stomach with prawns and fruit as quick as I could


^ The bloke second from right had worked as a fishermen up in Thailand and could speak a fair bit of Thai … fortunately he helped translate when the 20 odd glasses of wine I had started getting on top of me


^ The border army bloke from the day before even came to see us – he was really sick from the previous days drinking


^ Fortunately by the time we left we’d only got 2/3 of the way through the wine

[Wayne Kerr]

I was introduced to one of the fellows at lunch as “the local dugong fishermen”. People in this part of the world love to eat dugong and use certain parts of the critter as aphrodisiacs but catching the suckers is outlawed these days. He invited me over to his place to see some dugong parts and to show me his dugong nets and stuff. I guess one doesn’t get to do this every day of the week so off we went … here are some pics of what I saw.


^ The dugong fisherman’s home … lovely big balcony looking over the coast


^ Wouldn’t mind spending a few days lazing about here


^ He quickly produced some dugong parts – these are dugong tusks


^ This is some dried dugong skin – 10 grams of dried skin is meant to be better than popping 5 full strength viagra pills