Bai Sao by Bike

Lantern lit beach dinner (not in the least bit romantic

due to the company), but cheap and tasty nonetheless.

Our day on Phu Quoc started out at Hello Soap, the Laundry Shack/Oreo store/Motobike Rental Shop. I love the combination of entrepreneurial spirit and jack-of-all-trade abilities of these people. They can multitask like nobody’s business. Sometimes that can be a bad thing…for instance when the lady on the corner is calling out to me to buy a steaming bowl of her pho while she picks nits out of her daughter’s hair with tweezers. Somewhere in between the tweezers and the soup pot I lost my appetite. But I digress.

Yesterday we used the services of Hello Soap to do our laundry (the first load in ten days for the record). For a twelve pound bag of laundry, we paid $2.50 to have it hand-washed, dried and folded. Love that! Today we were using the services of Hello Soap to rent motor bikes. They really are a full-service facility. When we arrived at the counter with the three kids, the lady took one look at Nolan and got on the phone to her sister to have her drive over an extra small helmet. Just a few minutes later it arrived. As we all buckled on our helmets, I tried hard to banish the vision of the nit-picking soup lady from my head. Perhaps I’ll soon be procuring her services rather than second guessing her soup marketing strategy. If her nit-picking service is as inexpensive as the laundry service, I will gladly pay for her prowess.

Once we had donned our helmets, the sweet Hello Soap lady gave us a quick lesson in how to ride a motor bike. The only part I understood was how to pop open the seat-hatch-thingy – a handy thing to know, but not too helpful when the real trick is to not kill yourself and your children on this little island adventure. John filled me in on the basics, and I took a wobbly test run on the cobblestone/mud path that led away from the shack. Then I restored everyone’s confidence in me by asking if someone else could please drive the bike up the steep dirt hill that lead to the main road. The kids asked for a final photo together to remember our happy family, and we set off in search of the Pearl Farm and Bai Sao beach at the south end of the island (I’m guessing there’s a good chance Bai Sao means south beach, but I could just be making that up).

After a smooth start on a nice paved road heading out of town, the road turned to red clay mush filled with pot holes. I slopped and swerved and slowed and sped up. I had no idea what I was doing. Foster just held on for dear life and kept saying, “I don’t think Grandma would like this.” I’m not sure if he was talking about the scootering conditions (given that she’s an aficionado), or if he was referring to the fact that she would not like the fact that I was endangering his life. I chose not to ask.

We pulled over for a little bump break and took a peek at the empty coastline. Then we gave Foster his chance (Grandma avert your eyes!).

Riding Solo

Since we were breaking all of the rules today, we continued the trend at the Pearl Farm. The pearl part was kind of lame (just photos on the wall), and we weren’t interested in making any purchases, but we did learn that these pearls come from planting little plastic marbles in an oyster’s gonad. Who knew oysters even had gonads? We giggled. Then, following in the middle-school humor vein, we took pictures of the “toilet” sign which made us giggle too.

Next we met Baboo, the resident monkey.

We promised not to touch any stray dogs while we were here. Do monkeys fall into that category? The monkey looks as if it could be useful if nits become a problem. Obviously captive animals continue to be a big hit.

In a spray of red clay, we left the Pearl Farm behind and continued down the road to the south end of the island. By the time we finally made it back to a paved road, we all had suffered some serious spinal damage from bouncing through pot holes. Unfortunately we turned onto the paved road in the wrong direction and headed into the main shipping port of An Thoi. Typically I would enjoy a trip through a town’s bustling market. However when I am driving a motor bike that I am not at all qualified to be piloting, I am only worried that I may kill someone or something because random things and people seem to keep popping up in the road in front of me…turkeys, chickens, kids on enormous bikes, cows, more scooters, and occasional honking trucks. When we hit the water and see large ships in front of us, we realize we are indeed not where we intended to be. Sadly this means we must turn around, and turning around is not my strong suit on a motor bike. Brianna (my new riding partner) gets off because she fears for her life, and I do a sorry shuffle, accelerate, skid, turn and eventually get pointed in the direction from which we came. Gripping my handlebars for dear life, we make our way back through the crowded marketplace in search of the promised idyllic beach.

This is where I am supposed to tell you that our beach was, in fact, a mosquito-infested swamp. But it was not. The beach was pristine (with the requisite trash here and there). We found crystal-clear, warm water. The wind from the west side of the island was gone, and the water was calm and inviting. We enjoyed lunch at a beach-side restaurant, where the kids played with sand crabs and swung in the nearby hammocks. It would have been a perfect spot to spend the day. Unfortunately the motor bike adventure had used up a good portion of the day, and we had to turn around and beat a path back down the red clay road before the sun set. There was no way I wanted to compound my already complicated driving situation with darkness.

               

I virtually flew over the potholes on the way back. Darkness set in just as we hit the pavement again and stopped to fill up on gas. Miraculously, as I stared down that dark, steep, cobblestone pathway leading back to Hello Soap, my guardian angel arrived. She pulled over on her scooter, and said, “Do you want me to drive it down that hill for you?” I jumped off that thing faster than you can say Ho Chi Mama, and let her work her downhill magic. “This bike belongs to my sister,” she told me when I joined her at the bottom of the hill. Hello Soap: full service with a smile. To celebrate surviving our little adventure, it only seemed appropriate that we take them up on their final offering, and we stocked up on Oreos for dinner.