It was a bad scene, man.

Phu Quoc is:

1) actually closer to Cambodia then Vietnam (and was once owned by Cambodia).
2) home to many blue-tongued dogs.
3) a beautiful island ringed by white sand beaches and motorbikeable roads.
4) my kind of heaven.

So we did what any self-respecting and tired traveller would do, We relaxed on the beach outside our bungalow, read books and took a day trip to a northern beach on bikes.

For those who are not aware being on most beaches in Vietnam is basically the same as shouting for the local women to come and try to sell you massages, manicures, trinkets and various other services and goods. Unless you have extremely good stamina and ignore them doing their pitch (sometimes groupws of them) as you try and read the latest trashy book picked up in a bookswap then you will buy something to give you some peace and quiet.

I picked the second option.

The women that approached me were pushing the string hair removal system which they aptly demonstarted while reminding me of my 'not good' legs and the 'beautiful' legs I could proudly display if I just parted with a small amount of dong. After a days harassing I caved. They set up a sarong on the sand, told me to lay down and then commenced their special form of slow painful torture. The string is pulled across taught skin wrenching the stubborn hair from its roots. But only a few hairs are removed each time so the whole process takes hours. And every second of it is like a dozen pins being roughly pushed into your skin. In fact at some point a fire ant bit me but it was nothing compared to the intense pain I was willingly putting myself through with these women. But I am stubborn and refused to make them stop. The pain just went on and on. 'Very hairy' they told me by way of explaining why it was taking so long as I looke dover at them imploringly to stop the pain, and then another woman would join in the torture grabbing my other leg to speed up the process. Seriously the most ridiculous thing I have ever done.

Then we made a plan to do a whole days trip and circumnavigate the island. We set off across the island following our newly purchased map that was completely lacking in relevant information such as road names though it had lovely pictures of squirrels and trees and snorkellers on it.

Once reaching the eastern side we headed north to follow the coast to the top of the island. The road became increasingly bumpy and difficult and then it became almost unrideable. The road became a slippery curvy one-track mud-dodging, feet-balancing event. And then the road/track started dipping down into creeks and rivulets with rickety old bridges roughly constructed to allow motorbikes to cross. Then we'd climb up the hill balancing on ridges and paths forged by previous riders. It was dangerous. After the fifth hill we came to a particularly rickety bridge and after some consideration decided to cross rather then turn back and go over all the previous dangerous crossings. I was first and made it over safely but as I rode up the other side my bike slipped into a deep ditch and fell on its side, exhausted. Meanwhile meka had crossed the bridge but her bike had stalled and she couldn't move either. I attempted to push my bike back up but it was stubborn and I had no strewngth to move it. I then made the stupid decision to rev the engine while I stood next to the bike and let the forward motion gently push my bike out of the bog or that was my hastily schemed up plan. The bike took off, flew over the ditch, faltered, dragged me along then landed on top of me. Ouch. In the words of Alex Tassle; 'It was a bad scene, man'.

I didn't cry and eventually we rescued our bikes- I don't know how, I was dazed and confused and hurt, dusted off my bruises and scrapes and determinedly headed onwards. We reached the islands tip (just 10km from Cambodia) and headed westwards until we reached a baeautiful white sand beach with massive rolling waves. We leapt about in the water and were soon joined by five curious local children. We all got dumped in the waves, giggled, screamed and got dumped again. I love waves.

Next we took the south road back to the main town. Then disaster struck. Mekas tyre blew and before she had a chance to react she tumbled sideways into a big puddle followed closely by her motorbike. It wasn't good. She has many deep scrapes and (at the time) was covered in dark brown mud. After washing her injuries in the ocean we found that we were just down the road from the only bike mechanic we had seen for over an hour. Unlucky but lucky. The tyre was soon fixed and we made it back to the bungalow just after dark, tired and bruised and sleepy. This morning we looked over our injuries and while mine are bad and far-reaching Mekas are deep and very painful. We are spending the night in Rach Gia the port town before reconsidering our travel plans to Cambodia, it may be better to avoid the coast and therefore the temptation to swim.