Phu Quoc, no longer the 'last paradise' of Vietnam?
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2021 7:22 pm
Jeez..I was thinking of taking Mrs Cargo to this place pre Covid..after reading this, I'm not so sure 
Vietnam’s biggest island long held onto a seductive image as the country’s ‘last paradise.’ Then came the clubs, a casino, and a safari.
Travelers who arrive on the Southeast Asian island of Phu Quoc may be forgiven for thinking they are in Venice, the Amalfi Coast, or Paris – anywhere but Vietnam.
When Ken Atkinson first visited the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc in 2003, he was struck by its beauty.
“It was similar to Phuket or Samui when these Thai islands started from nothing,” Atkinson said of the island, which is southwest of Vietnam. The executive chairman of Grant Thornton Vietnam, Atkinson has been based in Ho Chi Minh City for more than two decades.
Hawksbill and green turtles nested on its white-sand beaches. Crystal-clear waters teemed with coral reefs. Much of the 593-square-kilometer island was covered with forest ecosystems. There were no more than 45,000 residents then, and their key occupations included fishing, producing Vietnam’s best seafood and fish sauce, cultivating green pepper, and farming pearls. The nature on Phu Quoc (pronounced foo kwok) was flourishing so richly that UNESCO designated the island a biosphere reserve in 2006.
“To me, it was a diamond in the rough,” said Atkinson. “There was a great opportunity to develop Phu Quoc into something spectacular in Vietnam.”
Fast forward to 2021, and Vietnam’s biggest island has indeed been developed into something new – but it’s also become something unrecognizable.
Previously, Phu Quoc was likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Bali or South Korea’s Jeju – islands that promoted local culture as they developed their tourism scenes. Now Vietnam’s largest island is more likely to be compared to Las Vegas or China’s Hainan. Phu Quoc is on steroids with the kind of development that’s already threatening its seductive image as the “last paradise” of Vietnam.
Thousands of hotel rooms, condotel units, and row upon row of cookie-cutter shophouses, villas, and residences are being built as far as the eye can see.
“They’ve got more rooms than Sydney, Australia. There’s something like 30,000 hotel rooms, built, under construction, or in the planning stage,” said Atkinson, whose firm provides financial advisory and transaction support to investors. “That’s excluding Vingroup’s 12,000 additional rooms, and before all the condotels, villa developments and residences, which means at least 40,000 hotel rooms.”
Development stretches as far as the eye can see on a Phu Quoc beach.
A canal on Phu Quoc is built up to look like Venice, replete with candy-colored storefronts.
The Phu Quoc International Airport opened in 2012, opening the floodgates for domestic tourism to the island. The airport primarily operates routes from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. In 2018, plans were announced for a second runway and passenger terminal to handle 14 million passengers a year by 2030, up from four million currently, according to a Center for Aviation report.
Most of the projects appear to be aimed at the fast-growing Vietnam middle-class. Many of their websites are in Vietnamese. The vast majority of the five million visitors who visited in 2019 were locals, said the experts interviewed for this article.
I’m afraid that Phu Quoc can’t be as natural with fresh air, beautiful beach and forest as it used to be,’ a Phu Quoc resident told Insider.
Full: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/phu- ... ake-2021-9
Vietnam’s biggest island long held onto a seductive image as the country’s ‘last paradise.’ Then came the clubs, a casino, and a safari.
Travelers who arrive on the Southeast Asian island of Phu Quoc may be forgiven for thinking they are in Venice, the Amalfi Coast, or Paris – anywhere but Vietnam.
When Ken Atkinson first visited the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc in 2003, he was struck by its beauty.
“It was similar to Phuket or Samui when these Thai islands started from nothing,” Atkinson said of the island, which is southwest of Vietnam. The executive chairman of Grant Thornton Vietnam, Atkinson has been based in Ho Chi Minh City for more than two decades.
Hawksbill and green turtles nested on its white-sand beaches. Crystal-clear waters teemed with coral reefs. Much of the 593-square-kilometer island was covered with forest ecosystems. There were no more than 45,000 residents then, and their key occupations included fishing, producing Vietnam’s best seafood and fish sauce, cultivating green pepper, and farming pearls. The nature on Phu Quoc (pronounced foo kwok) was flourishing so richly that UNESCO designated the island a biosphere reserve in 2006.
“To me, it was a diamond in the rough,” said Atkinson. “There was a great opportunity to develop Phu Quoc into something spectacular in Vietnam.”
Fast forward to 2021, and Vietnam’s biggest island has indeed been developed into something new – but it’s also become something unrecognizable.
Previously, Phu Quoc was likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Bali or South Korea’s Jeju – islands that promoted local culture as they developed their tourism scenes. Now Vietnam’s largest island is more likely to be compared to Las Vegas or China’s Hainan. Phu Quoc is on steroids with the kind of development that’s already threatening its seductive image as the “last paradise” of Vietnam.
Thousands of hotel rooms, condotel units, and row upon row of cookie-cutter shophouses, villas, and residences are being built as far as the eye can see.
“They’ve got more rooms than Sydney, Australia. There’s something like 30,000 hotel rooms, built, under construction, or in the planning stage,” said Atkinson, whose firm provides financial advisory and transaction support to investors. “That’s excluding Vingroup’s 12,000 additional rooms, and before all the condotels, villa developments and residences, which means at least 40,000 hotel rooms.”
Development stretches as far as the eye can see on a Phu Quoc beach.
A canal on Phu Quoc is built up to look like Venice, replete with candy-colored storefronts.
The Phu Quoc International Airport opened in 2012, opening the floodgates for domestic tourism to the island. The airport primarily operates routes from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. In 2018, plans were announced for a second runway and passenger terminal to handle 14 million passengers a year by 2030, up from four million currently, according to a Center for Aviation report.
Most of the projects appear to be aimed at the fast-growing Vietnam middle-class. Many of their websites are in Vietnamese. The vast majority of the five million visitors who visited in 2019 were locals, said the experts interviewed for this article.
I’m afraid that Phu Quoc can’t be as natural with fresh air, beautiful beach and forest as it used to be,’ a Phu Quoc resident told Insider.
Full: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/phu- ... ake-2021-9
