2006: Phu Quoc - Where A Man Is Safe At The Day Spa

I never realized how hot it is between a woman’s thighs. Being a heterosexual female, it’s not a place I’ve ever found myself before. But this is Vietnam. I have lost count of the number of women in crotch-high mini skirts who have straddled my semi-naked butt and given me a good pounding.

Zhou is different.

Zhou runs the day spa at Sao Bien Sea Star Resort on Phu Quoc Island. Not the same
Zhou who pulled me out of the mud at Ta Van. This woman is in her forties, I would say. Big smile, big waist. Fabulous hands. Zhou and her staff are dressed like most Vietnamese women at the beach… floppy hats, long sleeved woolen sweaters, baggy pants down to the ankles, toe socks and flip flops. When they leave the protection of the coconut palm grove where they’ve set up shop, they pull on the arm-length gloves that protect their fingers from the apparently hideously disfiguring rays of the sun that might, Buddha forbid, turn their bodies a shade darker. Unless they’re on a job, of course. Then they need those magic fingers to be fully exposed.

I’ve always wanted to live on an island, but it never occurred to me that getting a massage on the beach would be a pleasant experience. Drifting sand sticking to your oiled up skin, the masseuse grinding it into your flesh like a salty body scrub. It just didn’t sound appealing. But I was so wrong.

Zhou spreads an enormous sheet on the sand and motions for me to lay down. I wriggle around a bit and the sand molds itself perfectly to my body. It’s just as comfortable as a massage table. She opens my bikini strap and digs in. Going topless in public is not the slightest bit acceptable here so I am her captive until she ties my bra back together. Going bottomless is equally taboo, male or female. Everyone has to keep their bottoms on in public at all times, even while getting a massage. Since we are in public, this may be the one place in Vietnam where a man can count on getting a massage without being propositioned. Too bad Robert isn’t here.

Phu Quoc sunset from my bungalow

I melt into the warm sand under the shade of a fragrant frangipani tree, no sound but that of the waves lapping at the shore a dozen yards away, the mildest of breezes passing over me just often enough to keep me cool. If the other tourists are nearby I can’t hear them. Some of them have been here for a month already and are about as stressed out as jellyfishes. Leaves rustle overhead and a moment later a coconut falls to the sand with a muffled thud. Just a reminder to all of us that life is really quite dangerous. A coconut could fall on your head, you know.

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I’ve always wanted to live on an island. An island where more than 75% of the roads are made of red packed earth. An island where the sand is white and the water clear, warm, placid and shallow. Where I can walk out a quarter mile and still poke my head up above the surface. An island where the only traffic jams happen when two herds of cows meet along a road. Where the sea is an integral part of people’s daily lives… they eat from it, they play in it, they take care of it. They can’t imagine what life would be like without it. Where the rain is torrential but brief, and thunderstorms rage themselves out as quickly as they build. Where newspapers are never less than two days old. Where power outages are a daily occurrence, telephones are not considered standard equipment, and internet is something you do in the city.

I can’t believe I have to go back to California next week already. I’ve only just gotten here.

I spent my first night at the Saigon Phu Quoc Resort. It is supposed to be the best resort on the island, but to me it just felt stodgy. Big pool, overpriced Western menu, security guards walking the thin strip of beach. I want exposure, not protection. I take a long walk along the beach to see if I can find a bungalow more my style, which is how I find Sao Bien. Sea Star.

Sao Bien is about the most low-tech resort imaginable… no pool, no bar, no massage rooms, no burgers. There is no “directory of services” in the room since there aren’t any organized services to direct me to, but Dũng is within earshot of the front desk day and night and he can arrange any service I could possibly want. Need a wake-up call? There’s no phone in my room, but Dũng will send someone over to knock on my door any time I want. Need laundry done? There’s no little basket with a checklist to mark off what I’m leaving, but if I tell Dũng I left a pile of laundry in my room, it will be there fluffed and folded when I get back. Need a pair of pants hemmed? He can do that too. Want a tour of the island? He’ll find just the right person using whatever mode of transportation I like. Not only that, but Sao Bien has the prettiest stretch of beach and its restaurant – a wooden deck on the sand – serves some of the best seafood I’ve ever eaten. So what if there’s no furniture to put my things in? I’ve been living out of a suitcase for months. I could stay here forever.

Like in Mui Ne, the Phu Quoc beaches are shared by vacationers and locals… vacationers sunning, reading, swimming and relaxing, and the locals fishing, selling fruit or playing in the water. Every once in a while a small herd of brown cows mills by, walking slowly along the water’s edge until it gets too far, at which point a pack of dogs comes out of nowhere to nip at their hooves and turn them around again.

Fishermen use the same methods here as in Mui Ne and probably most other fishing communities in Vietnam. It’s a team effort that starts before the sun rises. It’s not the roosters that wake me up on Phu Quoc or at Mui Ne, it’s the fishing boats. At Phu Quoc they use regular canoe-shaped motorboats made of faded wood and hiccupping along through the water propelled by a two-stroke engine. If I leave my windows open I hear them leave before dawn, then I’m free to toss back to sleep for a few more hours.

Some fish directly from the boat but others stay closer to shore and only use the boat to drape their nets around a patch of shallow ocean floor then chug right back to dock. Then they let the ocean do its magic, letting the net lie quietly at the bottom until thousands of tiny fish venture back above it. Starting around 6:30 I hear them again, only this time it is the sound of line reels pulling the net back in. It is a laborious process. In Mui Ne, where people are less affluent, they don’t even have reels. It takes ten or more men to pull a line in by hand, slowly making their way down the shoreline as the net drifts in the current. Here at Phu Quoc, every fishing team seems to have two reels, one for each line of the net, which cuts their workload dramatically.

Either way, by hand or by reel, it takes about one hour to pull the entire net back to shore. By now, it’s full of tiny fishes and a woman with a basket is standing by ready to fill the day’s orders. The entire team is assembled… two men work the net reels, their assistants and the woman pull fish out of the net and sort them into baskets, and two boat men neatly pull the net back onto the boat for the next day’s deployment. Tourists stand inches away, peering down into the rope basket, staring over the mens’ shoulders, shamelessly taking photographs as if the fishermen are a tourist attraction. They don’t complain, though.

Morning fishermen reeling in the catch

Somehow a larger fish makes it past the net men. A boat man pulls it out and tosses it back into the water. He misses the net, and the net boy speaks sharply to him, “What are you doing? That was a big one!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” the boat man seems to reply. “You can still get it… just be quick.” The net boy turns around to find the fish, still flapping away in the patch of water between the boat and the net. Like lightning, he shoots his hand into the water and pulls out the fish with his bare hand, tossing it into the basket with a look of satisfaction. The boat man smiles, “he’s coming along nicely,” he thinks.

This goes on every day here, rain or shine. Hauls of tiny fish destined for soups, dinners or fish sauce. When the haul is over everyone on the team shares breakfast together on the beach. Later in the day, they spend their time mending, cleaning, scrubbing, keeping what little capital equipment they have in good repair so it lasts.

On my last morning on Phu Quoc I go for a swim as the fishermen on my stretch of beach are starting to sort through their day’s catch. The water is refreshing even at 8:00 a.m. and I swim out far past the point where I could stand up if I needed to. I know now that I don’t need to.

I swim through huge schools of tiny fish… the lucky ones, I think. The ones that didn’t get stuck in the net today. They seem to be playing with me, jumping out of the water by the dozen, celebrating, perhaps, one more day of evading the net. They’re so small that I can barely see the fish themselves, but they jump almost a foot out of the water and they leave tracks of water droplets arcing behind them as they go. They seem to be leading the way for me so I follow them. Just below the surface I can see them by the hundred, but once they jump they are so delicate I can only see them by the track of water droplets they leave behind. Today we’re playing together but tomorrow they might end up in my dinner. But no… I am leaving today. Well, maybe next year they might end up in my fish sauce.

I am sad to leave this place. I started out my travels this year looking for a new place to call home. A place where I feel comfortable, accepted, accepting. Where life is simple and basic and not too stressful. I’m not ready to move on completely yet, but perhaps when I am, this will be the place where I make my home. I would love to stay here through the rainy season to see how the thunderstorms whip at the island and to earn that sense of camaraderie that comes with the passing of time and the surviving of adversity together. It doesn’t take much money to live here; all it takes is an ability to do without material things.

I will miss the sounds and smells of Vietnam, both the good ones and the bad. The soapy smell of a group of western tourists fresh from their five-star hotel. The sweaty smell of them later that afternoon on a bus or an airplane. How clean the Vietnamese are… always washing things, cleaning things, dusting things, sweeping even if the floor is made of dirt or sand. The sound of a coconut being hacked open to make a refreshing drink. The sound of honking horns, the smell of motorbikes. The sound of the Vietnamese language, white noise to me now because I can’t understand it but have grown accustomed to its tones. The smell of cigarettes. The sound of tropical song birds. Drivers calling to me, “motorbike, Madame?” Smells of tea and lush herbal greenery in the mountains. The sound of water – rain, rivers, waterfalls, thunderstorms, water everywhere. The sound of aerobics in the park. The smell of exhaust fumes. The smell of fish sauce. The smell of fresh bread. The sound of a loudspeaker broadcasting the daily news propaganda at 7:30 in the morning and 5:30 at night. The sound of tiny fish playing with me in the ocean.