What Phu Quoc Is Famous For: Beaches, Food and Nature
Ask three people what Phu Quoc is famous for and you will probably get three different answers. Someone will say the beaches. Someone else will say fish sauce, and mean it seriously. A third will start describing a cable car that goes out over open water for nearly eight kilometres. All of them are right, which is the strange thing about Vietnam's largest island — it has ended up famous for several unrelated reasons at once. The beaches, which came first Sao Beach is the one on the postcards, and it earns it: fine white sand, water that goes turquoise close in. Long Beach sits near Duong Dong town and is where people go in the late afternoon, partly for the sunset and partly because you can eat at the edge of the sand. Then there is Starfish Beach at Ham Rong Cape, where red starfish sit in water shallow enough to wade through. It is a small thing and it takes ten minutes, but it is the beach people photograph most. Around all of it: kayaking, snorkelling, and enough calm water th...