Each year, while working in China, people look forward to getting time off for the country’s biggest holiday. I was no exception. I had been planning what to do for months, and I finally settled on doing another split between several countries, this time the island of Phu Quoc, Vietnam, and then Laos for the first time.

I had been reading up on other island areas to check out. I was originally contemplating the relationship between Phu Quoc and Koh Rong in Cambodia since they are quite close to each other. Ultimately, I decided on Phu Quoc because I am more familiar with Vietnam, this island is bigger than Koh Rong, and it sounded like it was a bit more developed in terms of tourism and transportation between areas.

My time there ended up being more disappointing than good, although there were still some good moments. The big disappointments were the inability for me to go around exploring for other decent beach areas that I had read about, as well as becoming sick from eating local grilled seafood and having terrible diarrhea (even more disappointing because of how delicious the food was!). Here are the culprits; exactly which one caused the damage I’ll never know.

At one point, while out with someone looking for a beach, we stopped at an area that was secluded behind a row of small homes where the water was rather dirty from the nearby boating and dock area. Luckily, we were the only ones there, because I was forced to choose between digging a hole in the sand and popping a squat right there to “let loose” or using the ocean as a waste pool. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was, oh, so desperate. So, I chose the ocean. I had no idea this trip would turn into a scenario where I would one-up myself for the worst toilet situation (the previous being when I was back home sick in bed and “let loose” while I was asleep). The person I was with was sitting a ways away on the sand, while I was further out in the water with the tide moving in the opposite direction. I was at least courteous enough to take these things into consideration. While they were walking away toward the motorbike, “Mount Vesuvius 2.0” erupted. I won’t go any further into the details, but let’s just say the term “Pacific Ring of Fire” was a perfect metaphor.

For the next few days, I endured routine late-night visits to the royal throne, losing water and sleep. I had some probiotics, and I took some, thinking that would surely help, but honestly, I have no idea if it did anything to help. I wonder if it somehow aggrivated my insides even more. One of the days I decided not to take it because I worried about it, and I ended up feeling better. The next day I took another serving to see what it would do, and again, things went back to being bad, so I decided not to take more of this brand of probiotics for the rest of the trip, no matter what happened. Ok, no more of my “potty” mouth (hee hee).

The place I stayed at was actually rather nice, although I still don’t know how the receptionist managed to mess up my reservation dates since their own paperwork was correct. This resulted in me being called up and told that I would have to move into the room below me to correct the reservations. When it was time for me to move downstairs, I was all ready. Then I was told that I should wait until 2 p.m. before moving in so they could prepare it. I was livid and said “no,” so they managed to get it cleaned and prepped immediately.

Anyway, the buffet breakfast was decent, and the views were good. The whole area did live up to the name “Palm Beach.”

While there, I signed up for a last-minute island-hopping cruise. I knew this was probably not going to be all that good, but it was the cheapest option, and the owner of the company told me that if I did a private tour, I would be able to boat around to different private beaches. Needless to say, this wasn’t quite the case. The sites themselves weren’t bad (well, except for one area that my boat driver took me to when I insisted that we go to a private beach); they just weren’t that impressive.

During the trip, the stop for lunch was at a small but still crowded place in a small cove. The food was OK, though.

When lunch was finished and it was time to go for one more round of beach time, I tried to be more insistent about going somewhere quieter and private. I had to use my Google Translate app to let the driver know that I had talked about this with the company owner. I’m not sure if he really didn’t know of any place off of the standard tour site map or if he was just being a jerk to me, but he ended up taking me to a spot that was quiet, actually just down the beach area from the first place we went to, and was full of garbage and old, broken-down boat parts strewn all over.

After he took me to one other spot that I felt was not very good, he asked if we could go back, so I said “yes.” I paid, and the woman asked if everything was OK. I said “yes,” but whenever I feel unhappy about something, my face doesn’t lie, so she saw that I was unhappy. She didn’t speak much English, so it was hard to tell her the problem, so I just paid and got into the taxi quickly. I later complained to the company owner about what happened, and he apologized and said that if he were with me, then things would have been better, and that he would yell at the boat driver. Well, lesson learned.

At the end of the day, I decided to get one last bit of beach time back at the resort. I was determined to end the day on a better note. It wasn’t too crowded for the small stretch of private beach, and the sunset was nice.

And at dinner time, it was nice to end with some coconut and a light meal.

So, after a mediocre trip, I was hoping that Laos would be much better. Stay tuned to find out.