Street Food Heaven

After the homestay in the Mekong Delta I decided I wanted to experience Vietnamese island life on Phu Quoc which is part of a Southern archipelago very close to the border of Cambodia. I booked a bus to Rach Gia which was the nearest town with a ferry port however when I arrived I found out that all the boats were fully booked until the next day; I tramped around the harbour town with my backpacks comparing room prices and eventually settled on a £4 private room in a basic hotel. I had unexpected time to kill seeing as I was originally going to zip through Rach Gia to get to the island so I spent the day walking around the town sampling different street food snacks that I hadn't tried before - this is possibly one of my favourite things to do whilst travelling! I walked for three hours and didn't come across any other tourists but I did enjoy dense, dairylea-shaped pancake bites, a grilled banana wrapped in rice batter, some kind of small egg concoction and a sticky rice and coconut flavoured ball! All between 3p and 30p each and served with a kind smile. I caught the three hour long ferry the next morning, checked into my hostel, 'Mush'rooms', and headed straight for the beach where I had lunch and indulged in an hour long, £3 massage under an umbrella on the sand whilst listening to the waves. Perfect.

The banana and rice fritter, like most street food, was cooked on the ground by the side of the road.

The walk down to the sea, my first glimpse of a proper beach since Thailand in early January.

Just when you might be forgetting you're in Vietnam...

There is an abundance of cheap, fresh, tropical fruits on the island.

I met a Swiss girl, Lea, at Mush'rooms and we decided to share the cost of a moped and cruise around Phu Quoc island which is the size of Singapore and only recently began being developed for tourists; this means that there are still many deserted beaches, fishing villages and large patches of jungle largely untouched by tourists to explore. Whilst Lea enjoyed the views on the back I battled with the old rental bike over the bumpy dirt tracks and tried my best not to kill us when the accelerator got jammed. At a roadside kitchen we ate fried bananas in batter, grilled corn on the cobs and 'cong cake' which is a deep fried, muffin-shaped savoury cake with prawns that you encase in leaves and dip into the famous, locally manufactured Phu Quoc fish sauce.

Bai Sao beach - the beaches in Vietnam are only cleaned in the parts that house resorts.

A stall full of street food goodies at Phu Quoc night time food market, I ate the beige pattie which turned out to be tapioca.

The fishing harbour.

The local fish market.

As you can see there is a lot fishing activity on the island and I decided to seize the opportunity to go night-time squid fishing; I was collected from my hostel by a minibus full of Vietnamese tourists from other parts of the country and I was met with puzzlement, confusion and a stream of questions in broken English - "you are travelling with no one?", "where your husband?", "what your family think about this?" - luckily I'm used to this, I actually find it quite funny, and I explained that in my culture it is quite common to go travelling alone. The boat chugged into the open water and I chatted away to two ladies from Singapore whilst we tried to catch squid. Afterwards we were served a feast on board including the vile sounding 'squid porridge' which was on my list of 'weird' things to try. I arrived back at the hostel later that evening and on my way to brush my teeth before bed I got chatting to some people and the next thing I knew I was swapping sleep for a night out...

Unfortunately only five people managed to land a catch...I wasn't one of them!

Squid porridge - not as horrendous as it sounds! (Actually it's more like risotto and it's delicious).

Another hideous looking but great tasting snack: sea urchin!

Yes, I may be technically 'with no one', but there's always plenty of other people around!!!