First sunburn of the trip!

It was slightly overcast when we met our friend Do to began our tour of the southern part of the island. At first we were leary about going on the tour with him because we thought it might just be a better idea to rent a scooter on our own and explore. Cheaper. But since we had called him already and what not we just went with it. Best idea of the trip!

Our tour started with stopping at a couple pearl hatchery places.  They grew their own pearls, and we actually got to see them crack open a clam and find a pearl! It takes 3 to 4 years to make a small pearl, and 8 to 9 years to make a large one. Talk about a tedious process.  The color of the pearl depends on the inside of the clam shell, and black pearls are the most rare. Of course they would be my favorite ones, for that reason.

We continued on and went to another local city, An Thoi, on the island and went down to their harbor.  We got to go right up to one of the boats and see what they fish.  The boat we went to fished little minows, and from what I understood, they were bait for other fisherman and bigger boats. They had so many though, huge bags full of minnows. It was slightly stinky in the area so we left in a hurry.

By this point we had been driving around and the tour had lasted an hour so we figured from here we would just go back to our hotel.  Instead we headed to the prison on Phu Quoc.  It was a prison run by French Colonists who captured Vietnamese people and tortured them.  The prison is also known as Coconut Prison, and held up to 40 000 captured individuals.  They were put through various torture methods that were the most cruel and inhuman processes I have ever seen or heard of. One of the tortures these prisoners were put through would be having their knee caps removed by just a simple stake being driven into the knee. Another method would be putting boiling fish sauce or water in the inmates mouth and burning their mouth to such an extent they couldn't eat and would starve to death.  It amazes me how sick the Americans were to even come up with torture methods such as these.

While we we reading about various torture methods, a Vietnamese man came up to me and tried teaching me how to read the Vietnamese portions of the sign.  He was having a time and half trying to teach me how to properly pronounce all the words when I decided if he was teaching me Vietnamese I would teach him some English. I tried getting him to read the English portion but he just laughed, and then walked away.  I always get stuck in those situations! Aspen was standing a ways away just laughing, while i was standing there painfully reading Vietnamese.

Apsen and I escaped from the prison finally, and jumped back on the motos. We ended up hitting up the most beautiful beach I have seen yet here! It was called Sao Beach, and the waters were a beautiful turquoise and the sands were a brillant white and so soft! The water was the perfect temperature to cool off from the humidity and the heat.  There was a little beach restaurant, that served fresh seafood.  Both Aspen and I indulged in a cocktail and had the best meal I have had on our trip yet. It was squid made in chilli and garlic sauce and some steamed rice, so amazing!

Our guides had dropped us off for a couple hours at the beach and it was time to go, although we plan to spend the rest of our time on the island at this beach.  By this time it was almost supper, and I was very impressed at how much these men had showed us on the Southern portion of the island.  I thought it was time to go back, when the guys told us we were going to a waterfall now!  We took off on the motos, and I couldn't help but notice we were driving straight into a rainstorm. I mentioned to my driver that my bag couldn't get wet because it had my camera and what not in it.  He said no no, we won't get wet and then looked over beside and us and acknowledged that it was raining pretty hard.  Then he stepped on the gas and we took off flying, I guess his attempt to beat the rain. It didn't work.

Luckly we found cover within 2 minutes of the downpour and nothing got wet in my bag.  We sat under a little shelter until the rain died off and then hiked up a mountain path with stones of various sizes as the walkway.  I didn't even fall once! Which is surprising for me, considering how uneven the ground was, I was almost certain that I was going to roll an ankle.  Especially since we were doing this hike in flip flops.

We made it to the top of the waterfall and it was beautiful, so serene just nestled in the rain forest.  Our tour guide was attempting to catch water snakes and I had no interest in that so I just snapped pictures for awhile. Some more Vietnamese people were there and they were snapping pictures of Aspen and I! I find it so funny how people stare so much at us here. We motored down the mountain after to hit up our next destination.  I couldn't help but overhear the tour guide asking Aspen if she had a boyfriend and I started chuckling. She answered no but she said I did and then he asked her again but you have no boyfriend? Totally hitting on Aspen!

Our last stop was a pepper farm.  They grew their own pepper with no pesticides or preservatives! It was a neat place to see.  And the pepper smelled amazing and they had white and black peppers. Very interesting.

Finally we got dropped back off at our hotel, the entire day tour cost us ten dollars! Such a great day. We saw so much and found the perfect beach to spend the rest of our days. Which we plan to go to right now actually! Have to even out the burn we got yesterday from riding around on scooters all day. Sun tanning time for me!