The plan was to do absolutely nothing on a beach for an entire week.
This may sound easy, but taking a real vacation is not easy for a travel writer, a fact that elicits absolutely no sympathy from my friends. But the line between work and play is easily blurred when you photograph and write about cycling trips in Ireland or cruising to Antarctica for a living.
I vowed to hide my notebook, pen and cameras under a bed in some bungalow on some tropical beach. It was to be my reward for spending most of a too-short Montreal summer on assignments in the Canadian Arctic: November in steamy Vietnam to escape not only the sleet, but the equally chilling reality of turning 50.
Canadian travel writer Margo Pfeiff tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to succumb to the solitude and do absolutely nothing but relax on secluded Ong Lang Beach, on the quiet northwest corner of Phu Qu?c Island.
("Canadian travel writer Margo Pfeiff tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to succumb to the solitude and do absolutely nothing but relax on secluded Ong Lang Beach, on the quiet northwest corner of Phu Qu?c Island."
,"The fishing village of Duong Dong is where Vietnam's most famous fish sauce is made - and the air carries a light odour of fermenting fish. A vendor at Duong Dong market, in the centre of island's main town, sells meatballs. On this island, you can dine on world-class seafood for less than $10 a couple."
,"The Mango Bay Resort where the writer stayed, the chef stands beside her lunch specials for that day."
,"With a champagne bottle under his arm, my longtime buddy, journalist Jim Hutchison, who bases himself in Thailand four months of the year, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City to meet me after I had finished a hectic schedule of filing stories in Hanoi. The next morning we boarded a plane to a place neither of us had heard of two days earlier, called Phu Quoc Island. On the spur of the moment, we allowed a single line in the October 2005 Conde Nast Traveler magazine's Word of Mouth tidbits section to decide our vacation destination: " ... an isle with immaculate beaches and tiny fishing villages an hour's flight from Ho Chi Minh City is among the country's most worthwhile excursions."
Phu Quoc is a teardrop-shaped island west of Ho Chi Minh City -- more commonly referred to by its old name, Saigon -- and just 20 kilometres off the coast of Cambodia. Roughly the size of Singapore, it's blanketed with the largest remaining swath of tropical rainforest in Vietnam. Only 75,000 people live there.
On our final approach I saw, through the plane window, the 25-kilometre-long uninterrupted strip of white sand that is Long Beach glittering in the sun. Funny, I thought, there's hardly anyone on the beach.
A battered taxi picked us up in the blast of tropical heat outside the airport building, which was practically in the centre of the main tiny fishing village of Duong Dong. Instead of staying on Long Beach, which is south of town, we had decided on secluded Ong Lang Beach, a spectacularly pot-holed seven kilometres north of town.
more info-->>Vietnam Island is undiscovered -- for now
This may sound easy, but taking a real vacation is not easy for a travel writer, a fact that elicits absolutely no sympathy from my friends. But the line between work and play is easily blurred when you photograph and write about cycling trips in Ireland or cruising to Antarctica for a living.
I vowed to hide my notebook, pen and cameras under a bed in some bungalow on some tropical beach. It was to be my reward for spending most of a too-short Montreal summer on assignments in the Canadian Arctic: November in steamy Vietnam to escape not only the sleet, but the equally chilling reality of turning 50.
Canadian travel writer Margo Pfeiff tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to succumb to the solitude and do absolutely nothing but relax on secluded Ong Lang Beach, on the quiet northwest corner of Phu Qu?c Island.
("Canadian travel writer Margo Pfeiff tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to succumb to the solitude and do absolutely nothing but relax on secluded Ong Lang Beach, on the quiet northwest corner of Phu Qu?c Island."
,"The fishing village of Duong Dong is where Vietnam's most famous fish sauce is made - and the air carries a light odour of fermenting fish. A vendor at Duong Dong market, in the centre of island's main town, sells meatballs. On this island, you can dine on world-class seafood for less than $10 a couple."
,"The Mango Bay Resort where the writer stayed, the chef stands beside her lunch specials for that day."
,"With a champagne bottle under his arm, my longtime buddy, journalist Jim Hutchison, who bases himself in Thailand four months of the year, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City to meet me after I had finished a hectic schedule of filing stories in Hanoi. The next morning we boarded a plane to a place neither of us had heard of two days earlier, called Phu Quoc Island. On the spur of the moment, we allowed a single line in the October 2005 Conde Nast Traveler magazine's Word of Mouth tidbits section to decide our vacation destination: " ... an isle with immaculate beaches and tiny fishing villages an hour's flight from Ho Chi Minh City is among the country's most worthwhile excursions."
Phu Quoc is a teardrop-shaped island west of Ho Chi Minh City -- more commonly referred to by its old name, Saigon -- and just 20 kilometres off the coast of Cambodia. Roughly the size of Singapore, it's blanketed with the largest remaining swath of tropical rainforest in Vietnam. Only 75,000 people live there.
On our final approach I saw, through the plane window, the 25-kilometre-long uninterrupted strip of white sand that is Long Beach glittering in the sun. Funny, I thought, there's hardly anyone on the beach.
A battered taxi picked us up in the blast of tropical heat outside the airport building, which was practically in the centre of the main tiny fishing village of Duong Dong. Instead of staying on Long Beach, which is south of town, we had decided on secluded Ong Lang Beach, a spectacularly pot-holed seven kilometres north of town.
more info-->>Vietnam Island is undiscovered -- for now
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