After traveling many years to Vietnam to do mission work, it became custom to save a couple days for rest and relaxation. Some years back we decided to go to the beautiful island of Phu Quoc located in the Gulf of Thailand. This beautiful island had remote sandy beaches, warm water and lovely shells I would of paid a nice price for in any gift shop.

This little island is very proud of their pepper farms. Did you know Vietnam is the worlds leading exporter of black pepper with the highest quality coming from Phu Quoc. It is not the pepper farms that stands out in my memory though. …it is instead the fish sauce factory that we visited and were given a grand tour of. I remember taking out handi-wipes and trying to hold them over my nose to mask the smell or rather stench that rose up from the large wooden vats. Our sweet, polite guide rambled on about how wonderful and famous their fish sauce was. They explained how the fish was dried in the sun and then put in large wooden vats to ferment for long periods of time bla bla bla.

There came a point in our tour when we just didn’t care about anything but fresh air. I think this might be one of those tours you could do without…..
Denise