Diary of a Birthday in Paradise (a.k.a. Phu Quoc Island)

As if my birthday getaway to Phu Quoc wasn't fabulous enough, I just stumbled across this WAY KEWL befunky.com site where you can  easily create some amazing photo effects - right online, no pricey PS required.  As you can see, I instantly fell in love with the "cartoonizer".

But before I start slapping up the luscious cartoon mementos of my birthday fete, first a quick rundown on some of the highlights that made the holiday utter perfection:

• Just an hour's flight from Saigon, Phu Quoc (a Vietnamese island) lies amid the Gulf of Thailand, and is actually closer (just 9 miles!) to Cambodia than to the Vietnamese mainland coast.

• The round trip flight was just 100 bucks, oh yeah.

• As it was a birthday treat, I opted to pamper myself with a tad pricier digs than usual for this shoestring traveler.  Still, my Garden View cottage w/ breakfasts and airport transfers at Thanh Kieu Resort was just $52/nt. sgl.

• Better yet, upon arrival - they upgraded me to a SEA VIEW cottage - gratis!

• Just moments after settling in to my sweet bungalow, I checked off my first goal:  I juiced up my trusty GPSr and headed down the beach (just 900 feet) to find my first Phu Quoc GEOCACHE!

• Next order of business, I booked a squid fishing trip (including a sunset barbecue) for that evening (just $15, and it was FANTASTIC!)  A purely idyllic sunset, and so lovely to be out on the water after dark.  Alas, no squid for us (a lovely Aussie couple, plus two older Vietnamese gentlemen and myself) , but we did catch nearly a dozen fish.  Interestingly, one of the Vietnamese gentlemen got a bit seasick, so I offered him my (never used/needed myself) little pressure point elastic sea-sickness wrist bands.  He felt INSTANTLY better!
  

Happy Birthday... to me!

• The following day was my birthday and I spent the entire day doing... utterly relaxing things:

-  Reading my Kindle in the hammock on my bungalow verandah;

-  indulging in a full body massage along the beach, along with a full manicure and pedicure;

-  Munching on a shrimp burger for lunch with the sea (literally!) lapping at my feet;

- A bit of sunbathing (barely 30 minutes 'cuz the rays are brutal at this tropical latitude!), followed by a dip in the warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand;

- All topped off with a whiz into nearby "Duong Dong" town for dinner at the Night Market.  Seriously, a birthday dinner of all my favorites - SEAFOOD galore: fresh raw oysters on the half-shell, grilled jumbo shrimp, skewered grilled scallops, and my new favorite food on the entire Planet: barbecued SEA URCHIN!  I've enjoyed them raw before (in Mexico, etc.), but barbecued with a dab of oil, green onion and a sprinkle of crushed peanuts gave these honeys a smokey flavor that's simply out of this world!  And at a mere 10,000 dong each (about 50 cents), trust that I had my fill!

•  But a most memorable birthday treat came at the start of my day:  As I arrived at breakfast in the main dining room of Thanh Kieu Resort - suddenly the sound system began playing "Happy Birthday"!  And shortly thereafter they presented me with a birthday cake with my full name: "Happy Birthday Dyanne Elizabeth".  OMG, how on earth did they know???  Why... from my passport (which you have to submit when you check into any hotel in Vietnam) of course!

• The following day I hired a se om (motorbike taxi) for a half day ($15) to take me on my own private tour of the island.  First up, we headed north along the pot-holed highway with dirt road stretches choked in red dust to... why to grab the second of 2 geocaches on the isle of course!
  
  I truly have to laugh - I've found geocaches all over the globe now, from Bali to Taiwan, to Morocco, to Amsterdam to Egypt, often necessarily with the help of locals on horseback, in boats, etc.  And it's ever amusing to watch the perplexed look on the locals as I ask them to take me to the middle of nowhere, and then I root around for some mysterious ("trust me, trust me") something. Only when I finally find the cache container, do they "get it" - and they too are grinning from ear-to-ear and yelling "Woo-HOO!"

• Later we stopped at a fish sauce factory (that delectable - albeit stinky - concoction that's a key ingredient in most any Vietnamese dish - Phu Quoc island is famous for having the very best fish sauce).  It's made from anchovies and gazillions of the tiny fishies are aged for YEARS to get the perfect flavor.

• We also stopped at a pepper farm (another edible the island's noted for).  It was most interesting to see the little round pepper pods (turning from green to red when they mature) and then dried in the sun til they turn black.  The farm also had some tasty pepper mixes - a lemon/pepper mix that I've loved in many dishes in Saigon, as well as a most delectable mix of pepper, olive oil and garlic.  I bought a small bottle of each to tote back to my tiny kitchen in HCMC. 

• Actually, I very nearly didn't visit Phu Quoc 'cuz all the foreigners I talked to seemed to be headed/had been there.  I was afraid that it would be overly "touristy" (like many of the Thai islands such as Koh Samui, etc.) - a malady that I try to avoid in my travels.

But I must say, I was oh so happily wrong about Phu Quoc!  Yes, certainly most all the folks that visit the island are Westerners, but they all seem to favor the serenity of the isle, rather than seeking the usual acky "tourist" trappings of noisy water skidoos, para-sailing, and their ughy like.  In my 5 days there, I never heard a single motorized engine break the tranquility of the beach, save an occasional fishing boat putt-putting by a goodly ways off-shore.  In short - Phu Quoc is (blessedly) most certainly no "Parrrrty Island"... YET.

But do visit SOON 'cuz there's a new international airport due to open in two years, and already they're widening the island's main highway.  Sad, as imho, 'tis precisely those many potholes that give the isle its unspoiled charm. ;(

O.K. now for a full array of those luscious cartoons I promised:

My bungalow with private verandah and oh so su-weet HAMMOCK (my fave!)  Way kewl cartoon effect, no?

A fresh-from-the-sea feast - barbecued in the little galley of our fishing boat.

Duong Dong fishing boats - gotta love the colorful cartoon effect, no?

$4 full-body, hour-long birthday massage along the beach - ahhhhhh!

A magical tropical sunset along the shores of the Gulf of Thailand

If you'd like to see the full set of my Phu Quoc images (sans the gimmicky cartoon effects), check out my Phu Quoc Gallery at Through the Eyes of TravelnLass.

Just when I think that I can't take it another minute!

meh...

It's been nearly 5 months now. Five months devoid of all that is familiar. Nearly a half year since I was tossed out of the blessedly temperate emeraldness of my beloved Seattle. (well OK, moving lock, stock 'n barrel to some "g-forsaken rice paddy" was wholly voluntary, but still...) Tossed and dumped rudely here amid the insufferable heat, the sticky humidity, the insanely dizzying death-wish traffic, the perpetually frenetic nutso-ness that is quintessential Saigon.

Veteran expats will all nod in unison. The half-year mark is ever the great tester.  The honeymoon of expat-rosiness is over.  The novelty of exploring a new exotic home has dimmed.  Yearnings for peanut butter cups and good friends you've known for years bubble to the surface.  Suddenly being surrounded by babbling gibberish (even if the food is to die for) just doesn't seem quite so charming.  And you begin to wonder...

WTF was I THINKING???

Not artificials, these babies are my own home-grown tips.

Ah but then...  You meet your good Vietnamese chum downtown for a manicure.  Not just any ol' manicure mind you.  A first-ever-I've-always-wanted-a-FRENCH TIP manicure!  A hand-painted creation - delicately brushed, white-tipped, veiled with a thin coat of translucent blush - a veritible work of ART!

For uh... 2 bucks.

Ah yes, $2.00 manicures could keep me in Asia for a looooong time.

P.S. Stay tuned for an even better reason for hangin' out in Asia - a recap (w/ some mighty luscious pics) of my recent birthday holiday on Phu Quac Island.

Let's Have a PARTY!

Angelic "Jumpster" hard at work

Next Sunday is the last class for my dear "Jumpsters" (my ten, too-too-cute 4-6 yr. olds) so I wanted to have a little "party". A simple order in the U.S. - one trip to Target would get me party hats 'n such, and I could bake my own cupcakes and buy a can of frosting and sprinkles to let the kids frost their own cupcakes.

Ah but here in this (ever affectionately dubbed) g-forsaken rice paddy in Southeast Asia - tracking down such simple Western things as party supplies is a whole 'nuther ballgame.  Hang and I agreed that a stop at "Tous Les Jours" (a yummers chain of bakeries on most every corner here in HCMC - with delicacies to rival any Western bakery) would likely yield the plain cupcakes, but the frosting?  Uh, that might prove a bit more elusive.

So we biked the half mile (in the sweltering, repeat: S.W.E.L.T.E.R.I.N.G. heat that HCMC is presently enjoying) to Tous Les Jours, and...

Well yes, they had two different semi-promising cupcakes that might do:  A plain sugar cupcake (albeit with a crumbly streusel topping that would likely make frosting it by a 5 yr. old a tad difficult, nay a crumbly mess) or a plain top "Cheese" cupcake which (following an effusive consult in splattered Vietnamese between Hang and the baker) they assured me was actually quite "sweet".  Not sure "cheese" would prove a hit for a party for 5 yr. olds, nonetheless, I decided I'd come back on Friday to order a dozen for pickup Saturday night after my Seniors class at ILA.

But the BEST bit of serendipity at Tous Les Jours was... on the way out I spied a slew of PARTY HATS and (wait for it - it gets even better!) packages of those little curly birthday blow horns!!!  At a buck apiece for the hats (simply thin cardboard with a bit of elastic thread) buying 10 of them gave me pause, but hey - they had Micky and Mini Mouse on them, as well as Winnie the Pooh.  Besides, it wasn't as if I could run across the street (or even town, or... for that matter across the COUNTRY) to comparison shop at Walmart or K-mart.  So 10 cute party hats along with 2 packages of horns fell swiftly into my bag.

But the real dilemma was... what to do about the frosting?  Sure I could probably get the bakery to frost the cupcakes.  But I was determined to have the KIDS frost them - much more fun, yes?

But... where on earth might we find a can of ready-made frosting?  Even Hang didn't have a clue.  But we both decided that surely we could somehow make our own frosting, with... hopefully some cream cheese (yeah, uh huh, Philadelphia Cream Cheese here in a rice-paddy).  Then there was the dilemma of coloring it (uh huh, food coloring, in neat little squeeze bottles, just like in Seattle, right), and/or colored sugar to sprinkle on white frosting (dream on...).

Nonetheless, like a valient soldier, I marched off to the nearest large grocery store to see what I could find (Hang had to go, so I was now on my own uh, "frosting?"  "food coloring?"  uh, how do you say "cream cheese" in Vietnamese???)

The good news:  I found a small bottle of waaaaay cool bitsy candies (we're talkin' itty bitty bananas, oranges, apples, etc.)  Especially perfect for my Jumpsters 'cuz we've been studying "How many bananas?, apples?" etc. for weeks now.  And that eliminated the (no doubt futile) search for food coloring or fiddling with strawberry juice for pink, tea for green, etc. as Hang had suggested.  YAY!  Major score on the sprinkles front!

But there was still that elusive frosting...  Studying the cheese section intently was most disappointing.  Tons of "Laughing Cow" plus Emmental, Gouda, Camembert and Brie (ah, gotta love those French colonists!)  The Cheerful Cow miiiight work, but I had serious doubts (think: rubbery/gummy frosting).  In any case, nothing else that resembled the texture of cream cheese (save for tofu, but that was just plain silly.)  Then I spotted it...

An aerosol can of WHIPPED CREAM!!!

Woo-hoo!  Whipped cream might work.  The kids could squeeze there own on their cupcake, and then we could sprinkle it with the bitty colored candies.  The whipped cream was nearly 6 bucks, but hey - one doesn't scrimp on munitions supplies, yes?

Still, I was a little worried about the whipped cream and how it would work on the cupcakes, the kids squeezing the nozzle (I mean, with 10 active 5 yr. olds bouncing about, there's a good chance someone would misdirect the nozzle and...)

So I bought just the sprinkles and headed to a second larger grocery store, and there I found...

OMG, could it be?  Could it possibly be???

A small jar of (not a tub mind you, and not good ol' "Philadelphia" but still...) CREAM CHEESE!!!

The spoils of my party quest
(geez, they sure don't make it easy here in Asia).

So with that, plus a bit of butter (a.k.a. "beurre" here in this ex-French colony) and sugar (alas, no fine confectioners' sugar, but the finest granulated sugar I could find), plus a spot of milk should I need to thin it...

All RIGHT - we're ready to PAAAAARTY!

And to make the deal even sweeter - as I was walking to the checkout stations I passed an entire rack filled with - packaged plain ol' CUPCAKES!  Indeed, not the delectiables from Tous Les Jours, but 2 to a package, and... precisely 6 packages just sitting there with my name on them!  Needless to say I swept them into my cart, and they're now tucked into my freezer awaiting the party on Sunday.

I've not yet tried to actually mix up the frosting, but tune in next week to see how the party turns out.  I've got lots of fun songs and games to play, and I plan on taking a class photo, along w/ a bunch of other pics to make a collage to send to the little ones' parents.