I wake up already at 7 and figure it’s time to set this watergate straight. With the help from the reception I get hold of someone at our previous hotel and they indeed have the charger and will keep it safe until we get back there – good news and I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I wake up Mona and we try the breakfast, nice with sea view – having your omelette made for you always goes down well with me. After breakfast it’s time for serious slacking and swimming. After some re-blogging, and re-playing Civ it’s time for lunch at the beach. From there it’s slacking a bit before heading back to our room for siesta. I wake Mona up just in time for some drinks in the sunset. Life is pretty good.

For dinner we take a Taxi to Sakura (only Japanese by name), great food – fish curry was really nice but we need to remember that one curry is more than enough for two people. We ended up only eating about half. Nice and cheap place, and perhaps worthy of the top restaurant according to tripadvisor but not so close where our hotel was. The taxi driver happily offered to wait during our dinner for free – that’s how you know you’re paying well. In the end, the price of the taxi ride ended up being twice the price of the food, and the taximeter and my gps-app agreed so no foul play involved.

I woke a bit earlier than Mona and did some blogging, after two failed attempts of slowly waking her I informed that we had 10 minutes left before they closed breakfast at 10. As we packed our stuff we had company of our Vietnamese technician who I kindly helped after he had tried rebooting my iPad and fiddle with its network settings for some ten minutes. I suggested that he would try a testing device of his own since I thought it was rather improbable that all our iThings messed up their network connections at the same time. We checked out from the hotel, got a cab to the airport where again it was time to fiddle with photos and blog.

We landed at Phu Quoc Airport and were welcomed by a heatwave as well as taxi promoters while we still were waiting for the luggage from the conveyor belt. My patience trickled with 8 taxi guys standing in a circle around me with none managing to provide an answer to the not so controversial question of what the price was. In the end I resigned and just took the least annoying guy who had a taximeter. When we got to Arcadia they were overbooked, which was interesting since we had paid in advance. We were offered to be upgraded but then move the next day, we explained we didn’t want to move around but were happy to be upgraded for the entire stay. They agreed after some resistance, and we got to the room which was awesome – newly built, balcony and nice shelves for clothes. We quickly scouted the area and dipped the toes in the sea, about 27-28 degrees. We also saw the ladies offering massages on proper beds in the shade for around 4USD – things looked in general pretty good.

Mona had done a bit of research and we wanted to eat something non-Vietnamese but had not yet reach the pizza craving state. So Indian food it was, a restaurant called Ganesh who had OK reviews in tripadvisor. Masala tea, my precious, and garlic naan with some paneer in a spicy tomato curry, milkshake for desert. Nomnomnom, we may come back here before leaving. We decided to walk the 2km back rather than getting a cab, a breeze made the temperature feel like maybe 26-27, in contrast to the 33 when we landed. Life was good.

Then came Karma and her ugly step-sisters. The wifi reception was fine in all other rooms, and outside as well but no connection from our room, and this was not something temporary.Annoying but not the end of the world, after playing Civ for an hour or two I lost the achievement (virtual trophy if you like – important stuff!) due to not being online while winning. Then came the next blow as I would just upload the blog from last day in Ho Chi Minh City. Somehow versions had got mixed up due to network issues, the result – I got the first three sentences but the rest was gone. This is where nerd rage enters, and I decide to comfort myself by going outside to order a dishwasher. Which has increased 1500 SEK in price, at this time I realize I should give up and so return to the room in order to charge the iPad and go to sleep – guess if one of the chargers had been left at the hotel in Ho Chi Minh City?

We barely made it up in time for breakfast, the slightly softer than usual bed had been very nice to us. We did some research on what to do, the Cu Chi tunnels turned out to be nicer to do in the morning so we striked that option for today. Tripadvisor nr 1 thing was touring with XO tours so we checked them out. A bit pricey but they seemed nice, and had trips in the evening as well as a foodie trip. We arranged for two foodie trips (58 USD each) for the evening and went outside to stroll towards the War Remnants Museum. It was closed for lunch as we got there so we enjoyed a fika nearby, mango strawberry smoothie for yours truly tasted just great.

The War Remnants Museum was in some aspects similar to other museums of the sort, showing the cruelty of mankind – tortured victims and general horrible numbers and facts. Not surprisingly the focus was on the sufferings of the patriotic communist side, and little was mentioned about how things looked before US decided to go berserk. Nevertheless, Agent Orange, the sheer number of bombs and tortures does paint a not so flattering picture of US. There were also photo exhibitions, including some classics but it was clear that not all Americans supported this war – far from it. This in combination with the fact that this wasn’t that long ago, Senator Bob Kerry admitted massacres just a decade ago, and children are still born with mutations from Agent Orange as of today, left a bad taste. It didn’t help seeing that Boeing had proudly manufactured some of the gunships, but the perhaps most uncanny feeling was from realizing that very reason we can understand these horrors (and learn from them) was that information had been made public. Life magazine had very graphic images, stories of the horrors of war leaked through and the government realized that the support from the voting people were plummeting – so it seems that these heroes, these photographers and these writers, who many died for providing this to the public, were instrumental to enable an informed public that finally led to retreat. Contrast this with how US and other governments treats leaks of similar information today, it seems that unfortunately the lesson learned was not to behave as barbarians but rather to hide it and punish those who uncover uncomfortable truths.

Enough political ranting, we headed back to the hotel just a few minutes before we were picked up by our guides from XO Tours. They were simply put stunningly beautiful, and looked very professional in their traditional Ao Dai dresses. They drove us to the first stop where we met the other members of the group, it was six other tourists with their respective guide and the manager, Tung, so 17 in total but it didn’t feel crowded. The first dish was a soup with a fresh taste, it looked similar to the common noodle soup but had another name as well as taste. It was really good and it was only the first our of five entrees.

There were too many delicious dishes to describe here in the detail they deserve. In addition to the regular dishes we also tried frog which wasn’t bad at all. One thing that I did try but didn’t finish however was an egg with some partly evolved chicken fetus, it didn’t taste much but considering the alternative dishes and the limited capacity of my stomach I preferred the other dishes. We visited different areas and places in between the dishes and it felt like we really saw different parts of the city, district 7 where dogs walked freely and no sounds of motorbikes could be heard, Chinatown with night markets, district 4 infamous for its high crime rate and so on. With the exception from when we drove through a backpackers area we saw no other tourists but was surrounded by locals who visited their favorite places.

Perhaps it was the emotions from the museum, perhaps the joy of eating such good food with such a lovely company or maybe it was the fact that I rubbed my chili-smeared fingers in my eyes – regardless the reason the result was that I quickly needed to rinse my burning eyes with water at one place. One has a certain grace when crying and stumbling and trying to get water in your face but not over your clothes. All in all we had a great evening, the lovely girls were safe drivers and great guides, the food was really nice and we could definitely not have done this ourselves. So a bit pricey, but something we feel we can really recommend others to do as well.