Phu Quoc

 Things move slow here in Phu Quoc. just what I need now too. Not just today either. Old man time is coming for me, I feel his breath on my back, creeping up my neck. Slow.

I have held off aging pretty well up until now. But I'm starting to feel the slack. The last three years I have only been sick once, (COVID of course). My health has held up  and I have trained hard nearly every day for an hour or more, running or swimming, biking, or lifting. I have been racing in 5ks, almost always winning against men my age. Stretching more, feeling fit.

Mary, my wife, who has similar fitness habits,  didn’t want to come on this trip, but knowing me, she knew I needed to get out. We have been doing really well, spending a day nearly every week with our granddaughters and enjoyed each other more than we have since we were in our 30s. It been a miraculous time for us, something that has astounded both of us. Alpenglow maybe, who knows.  

But even with all that, I was bored..and the recent election was a crushing disappointment for me. Watching TV or reading about it…I really needed to get away for my own sanity. 

The fitness routine, as healthy as it has been, was getting stale too. I have not been writing much either. And - at 73 - I know my time for untethered adventure is running out. So me and my long time friend Mike, decided to head off to southeast Asia for a month. 

 I got sick on my 2nd night in Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - and stayed in my hotel room for two nights, skipping the free breakfast, with the blinds closed, sweating out the flu in a delirium.  My friend Mike arrived that night. I had the presence of mind to book him a separate room during my visit to Virus Hell. 

The next morning, I came down and finally had the hotel breakfast which kind of revived me. Our car arrived to take us across the Mekong delta to where the Mekong Eyes boat was docked.

  I had taken the same  Delta trip 7 years ago and it had changed considerable. Back then it was easy to imagine it as the unwinnable battle field that so many American (and probably French) soldiers and journalists had written about. Flat expanses of rice paddies intercut with long narrow canals and dotted with small village hamlets filled with those “yellow” (breed name) cows with the long, low protruding,horns familiar from the last scenes of Apocalypse Now where the bull (and Kurtz ) are being slaughtered, Kurtz (Brando) by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen).

This lightly populated flat cultivated wetland was what I could see from the elevated highway. The Vietnamese have been farming it this way for thousands of years, and they understood it's ecology.  The expanse of the Mekong Delta is huge and it seemed to go on from horizon to horizon.

Now, the Delta is very different. There are off roads every couple of kilometers and little towns springing up with services are visible. Walls are going up around property. The rice fields are being filled in with dirt, barged in along the canals, which are themselves being bulk-headed and developed. The rice fields seem to be shirking, possibly the result of the end of farming communes and the move to individual ownership, I’m not sure.  

We arrived at a ferry crossing next to the river, and waited briefly for a ride to our boat, the Mekong Eyes. We came aboard, were assigned berths, and sat down for a big lunch. I got through the first course and it hit me.

I spent the next two days sweating out another session of Hell. Poor Mike assigned himself a bed in the lobby - to avoid germs and probably my occasional coma snoring. A lot apparently happened during my sorjoun to Hades.The group visited a floating market, and a fish farm, had some great meals and fun times up on deck drinking among the mostly northern European fellow passengers. I missed all of it.

I am pretty philosophical about bad luck when travelling, because complaining only makes it worse. I’ve travelled with Mike a number of times over the decades - we met in September of 1976 when looking for apartments in Eugene Oregon where he and my ex-wife were about to start school, he as a nurse- anesthetist , Liz in Dance. Jeez, that's almost 50 years ago. We both went through a lot of changes in that time. I have two granddaughters now and he is waiting for his two grown kids to settle. We have had decades where we didn’t see each other, and even now, it is rare, with him in Hawaii and me still in Oregon. According to unnamed people who know us both, we can both be hard to get along, and are occasionally annoying (when drinking especially ) and bullheaded, but here we are, still friends. And the huge inconvenience I imposed on him having to sleep on the lobby couch oddly left me with no guilt; I could tell you stories of why this is. But I won’t.

Anyway we disembarked at Can Tho and travelled by bus southwest the rest of the way across the Delta to the city of Rach Gia and then took a ferry, called the Super Dong over to Phu Quoc. The north end of the island is spitting distance from the coast of Cambodia, but Phu Quoc is 100% Vietnamese from everything I can see. 

So that brings us to our resort, J.W. Marriott, Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort and Spa. It is huge. First of all, neither Mike nor I would have stayed at a Marriott venue on purpose. The ad Mike answered only talked about the beach, the windsurfing,the bar on the beach, the scenery, all of which was true. Our little hotel within the resort is called Mason D'Rose.  It's all great. And Cheap too. Just kind of hokie, with condos like European apartment blocks and  palaces interlaced with out of proportion Buddhist pagodas.

Obviously they are planning for big things here. From the entrance, with its huge Marriott signage, you drive a half a mile through acres of five story hokie yellow condos. All empty. Row after row of empty condos most with sand instead of flooring. It is wide too, maybe a mile wide from end to end, on either side of the main road are more yellow, empty buildings, as we found out exploring later.

  There are a number of boutique hotels here, like the one we are staying at, close to the beach and it appears that is where the majority of the people are staying. I would suspect that most of those are out here on the beach today. I can see from one end of the beach to the other here sitting in the middle the beach is about a mile long and I count maybe 200 - 300 people. This resort is built for 10,000 people easily. Almost all the Caucasians are Russian, although I did hear some Scandinavian languages at the far end in from of the biggest venue (with a Big Red Star for a logo). I am not sure whether the Russians are exiles or rich Putin supporters avoiding the cold. They don't seem like war resisters though to me. They seem very confident and well attired, (with high fashion fake Leopard skin bikinis quite popular) and among the men, loud bully-boy beach behavior. 

The Russians

The Mandarin speaking Chinese are sedate, usually with families, friendly, and like me, staying in the shade. The shade here is the best part. So many beaches in the U.S. are like deserts requiring umbrellas to avoid the solar radiation. Here is a forest of palm trees near the water, (and the bar).  

The ‘bar’ ain't what it used to be for me anymore. Carrot juice and coffee for me now. Even a beer causes discombobulating problems for me. It is one those dreaded rites of passage we all have to go through I guess. Anyway, that's the story so far.  

Normally I would never sit around writing in the afternoon on the beach, but its perfect for my situation, because I need to rest to get better. I did go in the water once for a short dip, and it felt great. Normally I would be doing some long distance swimming or at least run down the beach and back for a mile or so. But I have to get my strength back. Tomorrow we are renting scooters and cruising around the island. The next day flying to Hue via Saigon airport. Then on to some nature parks and many hiking in the mountains of Sapa, Ninh Binh, then Hanoi. 

There’s even more, because Im going on to China for a week afterwards, but lets not get too far ahead. At my age it just doesn’t pay.

PS as I upload this hot mess it about 9 pm and I am happy to report that I am well, feeling my oats,  ready to attack tomorrow. Honest this time I am better!  I might be too busy to write much tomorrow, but that would be the point.