A Travel guide to Phu Quoc, Vietnam

Phu Quoc holiday at minimal cost

This is a cost guide to a Phu Quoc holiday based on 7 days with two sharing accommodation and transport. If you want more information scroll down, to find out, where to stay, what it was like, instagrammable spots and advice. 🙂

Accommodation:

Cheapest accommodation of our trip at only $12 a night! We just wanted something fairly central, cheap with a pool.

Transport:

We organised airport transport with the hotel, as this was cheaper than the average price on google. We also hired mopeds here so it was very much a similar experience to travelling around Bali. Our accommodation offered airport transport for 50k VND each way per person. ($2.60 each way!)

Food & Drink:

We mainly dined out here. As meals came to a couple of quid/dollars and the island was quite small and easy to get around.

Activities:

In terms of activities we didn’t do much here. It was more of a lazy beach trip and to save some money. You can explore the waterpark, pearl farms and night markets.

We decided to head to Pho Quoc island as we didn’t feel we had enough time to head up from Ho Chi Minh and explore Hanoi. Our friends hired a motorbike and travelled up, but they had two weeks to do the trip. We looked at flights from Ho Chi Minh to a nearby island and this came up as one of the cheapest options. At around $60 for a return. We’d also heard this island was known for pearls. The hotel we were staying in Ho Chi Minh let us leave our big suitcases so we only took a small hold which was a life saver. (See post here).

We stayed in the Orchid Guesthouse when we were in Phu Quoc. It cost only £5 each a night, around $12 a night. Our decision was to save money here and to spend more time on the beach and eating out. Our only criteria was for a pool, aircon and central accommodation. When we got there the pool area was a lot smaller than it looked in the pictures. The hotel also happened to be in the shade when it got to late afternoon. I tried to sunbathe one day and kept having to move around the pool for sun! They did want to take our passports for duration of our stay, which was slightly unnerving. This was also the first time I have experienced this from accommodation when travelling. But if you just need really cheap accommodation with air con, tv and pool and near the beach- this ticks all the boxes! It also has a TV if you get bored.

Pearl farm: Online this comes up a lot as a spot for tourists to visit. The reviews however put us off visiting, it sounds like a rushed tour just to make you buy some expensive pearls. So we opted to get pearls at the night market.
Dinh Cau Night Market: So many different seafood options, outdoor restaurants and ice cream stands. Restaurants are expensive to eat at but the stalls have loads of different food that is really cheap. We ended up buying some pearl necklaces here and earrings made locally!
Suoi Tranh Waterfall: So we went here for the waterfalls as we heard it was an ‘amusement park.’ They have some cool statues and we were staying nearby, so wasn’t a bad day out. But this is not an amusement park. I wouldn’t recommend a trip here especially. Entry is 5k VND and 10k VND for parking (65 cent!!)
VinPearl Land Amusement Park: This looked amazing, however we decided not to go as we didnt have too much time here and it was quite a drive away from where we were staying. 500k VND adult entry (21 dollars).

Sao Beach: So we came here and had to pay a small fee for a sun lounger. Restaurants and bars were cheap nearby and I’d say price was for food you were paying fractionally more for a meal than in the likes of Bali.
Starfish Beach: You can actually see starfish on this beach!

Slightly more expensive then Ho Chi Minh, in terms of cost of food. We previously were in Bali so this was slightly more expensive then there even with the lower exchange rate. It did trip me up several times, seeing pancakes at 90k VND, I’d become conditioned to thinking this was around 6 pounds (as it was in Bali) but it was around half of that at the time.

In general, it was a nice place to chill for a few days and sunbathe. But in terms of activities, it was quite limited and it did get a little boring so we explored the markets and then looked at possible watersports activities. I clearly didn’t do my research, you can’t surf here as the waves are flat. It’s more of a chill island with not much necessarily going on which we anticipated but we thought perhaps once we got there it would be easy to find touristy spots.

Any advice

While it was nice to relax for a bit, I think we should of taken the time to look at other activities to do here. If I was to come again I’d rent a jet ski, go kayaking or go one one of the snorkelling trips. The main issue I had was running out of moisturiser. On the island they only had ‘whitening moisturiser’ which was a bit of a shock. While we went to the markets, we didn’t actually get to meet many people. So I would suggest going to some of the bars as we did feel quite isolated during our stay here.

Have a look at more holidays and cost breakdowns here.