24 hours on Phu Quoc island.

I arrived in Vietnam via the border crossing near Hatien. My plan is to travel in the Mekong delta area for a while and i wanted to start with the outskirt. Technically the large Phu Quoc island is not in the delta but it felt like a natural place to start. The second of two daily fastboats brought me there. I stayed in a place at long beach-as i found out- far more than the 15 minutes of walking from the downtown action the otherwise very cute receptionist claimed. But long walk get shortened considerably if carrying a can or two of Saigon beer.

A boat keeps a watchfull eye on the fishing post in Duong Dong town. 

They are building a new bridge across the Duong Dong river and have made a temporarily floating one.

The fishing fleet rest in the Duong Dong river.

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Lanterns. Lots of lanterns. To attract fish and squids in the night.

Squids at the market. I love squids...intelligent food for intelligent people....

The market in Duong Dong town. A busy, lively colourfull place. Noisy and smelly in places. Daily life Indo China.

nature medicine for sale. I got stomach problems (can't remember last i did-but it only happens in touristic paces), and they supplied me with a vine that actually helped.

The lighthouse. A gathering spot in the silky smooth evenings.

Cheap streetfood on offer just behind the lighthouse. 10.000 dong for a wrap of meat, veggies, spice and noodles. I grabbed one as a warm up before the more serious eating at the nightmarket.

The nightmarket is THE place to go dining. fresh seafood of all kinds-fish including sharks and moray eels, squid, shellfish, snails,sea urchins. They are all there. The beer as well.

Dinnertime at the nightmarket. Fried squid in a rambutansauce. Yummy!

On the island you have many things to do-maritime as well as terrestrial. Since i heard snorkeling probably is better in some other places-even though it is good there-i skipped that option. Excursion money must be spent optimally for a long time traveller. I went for a dry excursion on motorbike. My first stop was the Sim winery-a company making wine and liquors from the local Sim tree. I prefer the grape wine.

Giving forced birth to a pearl at the Phu Quoc pearlfarm. There are several farms with outlets along the coast-but this one is the best one seen from a visitors point of view. You get a good demonstration of the ways of pearl making.

Some examples of those implants used to make all those weird pearls.

A pearl threads pearls into a neckless.

View over the business end of the pearlfarm. The pearl baskets are suspended from those buoys out in the sea.

How the pearloyster spend their life.

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They actually do paddle those things.

In a fishsauce factory. The fish get to "mature" for a year in those barrels. No wonder the smell is tangible. However-Nuoc mam-the fishsauce is great with the local foods.

Dried seahorses for sale. NEVER buy thee fishes in ANY form! you will contribute to their extinction if you do. Nothing less.

And dried "something else"....

Preserving the catch. Busy work on deck.

A big fishingport at the tip of the island. The A frames on most of these trapfishing boats are wood.

A boatgirl transporting people to and from anchored boats.

After a fishingtrip. Cleaning the nets.

Some natural beauty. On my way to the Suoi Trahn waterfall.

The Suhoi Trahn waterfall. Not big-but pretty.

Just outside town i stopped at a pepper farm. Rows and rows of pepper plants climbing concrete pillars.

A new yummy meal. Fish in a tomato sauce.

During the day i also went to the Coconut Tree prison, a place i dedicated s separate post to.

http://theglobalexplorers.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-cococnut-tree-prison.html

Heading out to the fishingfields-we are going to try our luck on the squids and we pass this one just outside the wavebeaker.

Some fisherfolks do as we did-try their luck on the squids while waiting for their fishingnets to do their job.

The squids gets grilled over charcoal in the back of the boat. The crew found it VERY amusing when i ate them and got my mouth black by its ink. My fingers as well. I can testify it works well for writing!

Leaving the island. Taking the Superdong fast ferry service to Hatien an hour and a half away. For one with Norwegian as mother tongue this name is the sources of some dirty word plays-dong is a slang word for condom....I say no more.

The Cococnut tree prison.

The Coconut tree prison-it sounds sort of idyllic, right? The truth is somewhat different. The prison was originally built by the french on the Phu Quoc island just outside the Mekong delta. Later it was taken over by the Americans and the south Vietnamese who turned it into a camp for Viet Cong prisoners. It is that period which is told about in what now has become a museum not for the fainthearted-until not long ago, it was in use as prison. The story told here-with a solid dose of typical socialistic rhetoric-is one about abuse and torture. A prison with several mass graves surrounding it. a reburial ceremony was held in 2008. Welcome to the Coconut tree prison.

The camp consist of many primitive barracks surrounded by several layers of barbed wire. some of it electrified. There are guard towers, and guards patrolling between the barbed fences.

The latrines-to be emptied by inmates every day. No walls-easier to keep track of the prisoners that way. This was a daytime service only. At night one had two choices-suck it in-or do it in the barracks.

A segregation cell-one of several built when the inmates resistance movement gained momentum in the middle of 1968. One mug of water and two handfull of rice was the daily ration received from the enemy. Prisoners were employed in both cooking and collecting of firewood and as the boards state "it was a good place for our cadres and militants to exchange information and to make struggle and jail-breaks".

The segregation cell. Either glowing hot or freezing cold.

There is actually a camp kitchen there, even though the amounts of food delivered to the barracks were at the minimum.

The famous tiger cages of barbed wire. The unlucky ones were allowed only a shorts and had to be undressed except of that. No matter the conditions-rain or sun. Several prisoners died. What is not mentioned anywhere, is that this invention "created by American puppet administration" also was a favourite with the Viet Cong itself.

Some camp guard exercise. More than 40 methods of torture was established into the routine.

The ultimate cruelty, hammering nails into the skeleton of  prisoners. The next photo shows a bone with a nail trough it. It is retrieved from one of the mass graves and shows clearly this tableau is not free fantasy...There was an uprising in the prison-with elements such as hunger strike, self embezzlement and the killings of informants. In the aftermath of it, an extra lot of torture and tiger cage confinement was used. More than 4000 prisoners were killed during the almost five year period from July 1967 to march 1973-by "the enemy" as the Americans and the south Vietnamese collectively are called in all the exhibits. 

Medieval ways-boiling in a kettle.

The great escape happened on January 20th 1969. Inmates managed to dig a tunnel and 21 succeeded in escaping. In all there were 7 attempts of digging a tunnel, resulting in 5 escapes. As a result, the barracks got concrete floors.

The original tunnel digging tools.