Our journey to Phu Quoc (Fu Wok) was indeed just that. We walked out of our hostel in HCMC at 3:30am and caught a taxi to a minibus, a big bus for six hours to another minibus, a two hour ferry to yet another minibus, and finally a taxi to our bungalow on Ong Lang Beach at 5:30pm. All arranged with very little English and this piece of paper. 

The bus was nothing I've ever seen before. It was separated into three long columns of bunk chairs. And in the back where our seats were, was two bunk beds the width of the bus, separated into five seats per bunk which we named the tiger cave. And as you can imagine, us giants didn't exactly fit into these cozy seats. If I put my chair up, my eyebrows touched the ceiling and fully reclined we needed an extra foot or two of length. Everyone else had a lovely nap but we struggled a bit. 

Aside from being uncomfortable, we made some friends along the way. On our bus ride, through no effort of my own, I was adopted by a smiley older lady who shared her steamed mustache-shaped nuts (water caltrops), gave me the whole bag of them and then gave me all of her bottles of water. She wouldn't let me say no! She didn't speak a lick of English but she was excited to share. On our ferry ride, the two little boys in front of us wanted to play. They shared their rambutans and showed us how to eat them. Ryan impressed them with the  basketball game on his phone. And a few tickle wars later we were in Phu Quoc. 

After all of that, we were so remotely located with only fancy resorts around us, that we had to immediately rent a motorbike just to find food. Our motorbike was our lifeline to everything aside from the beach. But it was a beautiful beach with clean pretty water and extremely squeaky sand which made me giggle. Locals flocked to it before sunset to swim fully clothed, the kids use styrofoam cooler lids as float toys and the cows were escorted home for the evening. So many good sunsets at this beach. 

Figuring out food here was a struggle... Restaurants aren't open the whole day and the locals eat earlier than we do so we missed the lunch window our first few days and got nice and hangry looking for alternatives. Many of the restaurant looking places are actually just cafes that only serve drinks. Some places made you feel like a burden to be sat in the corner and overcharged. But we finally found a little lunch spot of broken rice and things, where the people were lovely and patient. They were amused by us and kept giving us extra food because we're giants. We found really yummy rice paper tacos at the night market and managed to get our motorbike parked in by three layers of other motorbikes. Ryan strong armed our bike up and over a huge curb to get us out while a whole table of locals watched with raised eyebrows. 

As an added bonus at our bungalow we had two dogs to play with! They were shy at first but a few belly rubs and they greeted us at the gate, slept on our doorstep and scratched our "Welcome" mat to pieces. This is our second "Welcome" mat. Love does come at a cost,