Vacation from vacation

We drove from Mui Ne to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) for 2 days. There's not much to tell. Big cities are just not for us, so we immediately booked a half-day tour to the tunnels that were dug by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War to attack the Americans. All in all, it was a waste of money. We spent a good 3 out of a total of 5 hours in the car, were chauffeured to a workshop of physically disabled people and paraded past them like in a zoo (and we weren't the only group of 30 that day) and the area where the tunnels are still preserved is just a tourist attraction, like a shooting range where you can shoot. Quite a few people enjoyed that and it was just terrible. I never want to voluntarily hear shots from that close again, it was just tasteless! At the very end, we were allowed to crawl through a section of the tunnel, which was a crazy situation and something you shouldn't get carried away with, because it's super low, narrow, dark and has bad air. Even though we only walked 100 meters, it felt like a kilometer. I don't really have claustrophobia, but I was pretty relieved when I was outside again!

We took a night bus from Saigon to Ha Tien on January 17th, to take the ferry to Phu Quoc Island the next morning, because now we're taking a week's vacation from vacation :) Phu Quoc is the last tip of Vietnam and is near the border with Cambodia. The island has many beautiful beaches, but it's quite touristy. We spent the first evening with Aisha (from Dalat) and immediately met many strange and nice people. Yes, among others, Max Giesinger, who chilled in our hostel that evening. Nice guy :)

The whole week we spent with two other Germans, Luisa and Valle. The days always looked the same, beach, sunbathing, getting a tan, going swimming and watching the sunset in the evening.

We always rented a scooter and drove to beautiful beaches. Our 'regular' beach was Vang Bau Beach. It's about a 40-minute drive from our hostel in the northwest of the island. There were rarely any tourists here and sometimes we had beach sections almost to ourselves.

Another beach that we discovered was even further north and that's where we found real life. The locals lived right on the beach.

And then we found THE paradise! In the far north of the island, there's a Starfish Beach where there are lots of starfish in the water. On the way there, we made a small stop for a walk through the woods. That was really nice and it was interesting how the trees grew there. It reminded me a bit of the car cemetery in Sweden.

The Starfish Beach totally overwhelmed us!

Palm trees like on Instagram, water as blue as in the Maldives, and the sand unbelievably soft.