Last Day in Phu Quoc

I travelled round the island today on the back of a motorbike. I would not have chosen this mode of transport, but no other option was available, so donning my mask, sunglasses and the helmet offered to me, we set off, on red dirt roads, through forest, past forested hills and mountains. My driver insisted on taking me to see a 'waterfall', which of course did not exist because it is the dry season. But there was a dam and an artificial lake, surrounded by thickly wooded hills, supremely serene, under the hot sun burning in the bright blue sky. Then he took me to the beach where everyone in the know goes - Sao Beach - a beach on the far side of the island, far away from the town and the hotels (and the sewage). The sea here was emerald green and clear, unlike the scummy sea on the other side of the island, where I had been swimming.

Then we drove back along the other coast until we came to the museum, which he insisted was 'very nice' although he had never been in it. On five floors, you start off on the ground floor, looking at fossilised wood, then slices of natural wood from an infinite variety of local trees (who knows how many of them still exist), a few of which had Latin binomials, but most of which only had Vietamese names. Then you progress upstairs through neolithic tools found in Phu Quoc, to pottery, neolithic, then later, up to the invasion of the French colonisers, the fight against them and the three prisons built on Phu quoc to house first the anti-French resistance fighters, then later the communists by the americans, with some pretty horrific photos of the tiger cages they put them in and the bones of the prisoners they killed. I had not realised that the wars that took place in Vietnam spread so far south.

When we finally returned to my 'hotel' I was covered in a thick layer of red dust from head to foot. Hopefully the mask had kept some of it out of my lungs. This hotel doesn't provide soap, so there is a certain amount of red dust on the towel now.

Getting the boat tomorrow back to the mainland - Ha Tien, then on to Pnom Penh by bus.