Fully immersed in Phu Quoc for 4 days, a new signpost for travel (written by Ho)

A relaxing New Year's holiday on Phu Quoc Island. It's not like I did anything particularly special. I stayed in a cottage surrounded by plants, reading books and floating in the pool.

We went to a tourist spot we found through internet info, and took a carefree motorbike ride. It might look active, but looking back on it, we only did one thing a day. When we were young it was, "Let's go here and there, and we have to visit that famous shop too" — that's how it used to be. Let's just do whatever we happen to feel like that day — it was that kind of trip. What sparked this couple's trip, our first in ten months, was simply, "We'd like to get away a little from our all-too-busy everyday life~" As it turned out, there were times we holed up in the cottage and focused on work, but still, a morning unlike our usual ones came to us — touching the warm, friendly smiles of the cottage's Vietnamese staff, and so on.

The sunlight streaming in from behind the leaves of a plant that has grown so big — the contrast is vivid, yet surprisingly, it can be rather soft,

The sound of sweeping the cobblestones as they were cleaned put me very much at ease. The balcony, which kept the growing tree alive without cutting it down, let me feel the warmth of the wood, and I was also startled by the nuts that came tumbling down in the middle of the night. On the very last day, I found myself realizing, "Ah, this must be acerola~

During the daytime, at the pool where no one was around, we could dive in playfully and play at diving underwater as much as we liked. Leaning against the wall of the pool and gazing absentmindedly at the land right beside it was a wonderful time, too.

Behind a cleared, empty lot stood a building still under construction — as if the plans had fallen through — looking just like a shut-down hotel, standing there all alone in its solitude. I wonder if the day it's finished will ever come. I wonder if there are people sneaking in there night after night. Just as the shape of clouds keeps changing, wild imaginings kept bubbling up and then fading away. When I wandered on a whim into an unfamiliar alley, I came across a café so full of color that it made me think, "Now THIS is the real Vietnam!

A window with no glass fitted

I realized that feeling the wind is incredibly pleasant. And seeing all those handwritten pop-up signboards crammed together somehow made me feel a sense of human warmth.

It's fine to go around searching for so-called breathtaking views or delicious food, but slurping down an ordinary bowl of pho…

Walking a path not yet paved

Only the sensations seep slowly into my body. It doesn't have to be anything grand, but wandering aimlessly as if I'd stretched out a walk just a little longer, feeling the smells, the sounds, and the air of a different place — that kind of time, I've come to realize, is so very precious to the way people live their lives. A luxurious time I could only feel now, when the pandemic has taken away our freedom. Migration Life Ranking