The four of us made it into HCMC, Vietnam early in the morning Sat am. After getting last minute clearance from our sponsor, Trace, to allow Audrey and I to make a beach trip to Phu Quoc, we rushed to the airport. We went outside at 9:40am with a flight scheduled for 10:40am, found ourselves negotiating with 4 aggressive Vietnamese for payment fee of our taxi fare. After finally reaching an agreement on fare price and being assured that our driver would get us to the airport at 10:00am we were on the road. To be conservative, the taxi driver was very slow, maybe the thousands of motor scooters to compete with may have had something to do with that, but finally arrived at the airport @ 10:20am and ran (Home Alone style) to see if we could make the flight in time. Luckily, we got to our gate about 10:30am, two minutes before the flight boarded. After a 50 min flight, Audrey and I successfully arrived in Phu Quoc, a little known beautiful and exotic beach south of Cambodia. I would speculate that Audrey and I were the only two Americans on the island. We met several Europeans and Australians. We had a great one day trip and enjoyed the beautiful and isolated beach. Rumor has it that an international airport will eventually be placed on the island in the near future creating an opportunity to commercialize the hidden gem and destroy the relaxing ambiance that we got to enjoy. We met some very nice Vietnamese people and enjoyed some tasty local cooking. Pictures to follow.
-J. Kroeger
That looks amazing! Much nicer than the Ohio River I must say. I wish I could have seen you sprinting through the Airport!