Five areas, and the driving each one costs
Choosing an area on Phu Quoc is mostly a decision about driving time, and almost nobody makes it that way. Here is each area with the honest trade-off attached.
The five areas
| Area | What it is | Typical room | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duong Dong | The town: market, harbour, food, traffic | 600k - 2m dong | Eating, convenience, short stays |
| Long Beach (Bai Truong) | 20 km of continuous hotel south of the town | 1m - 6m dong | Beach holidays, sunsets, families |
| Ong Lang | Quiet low-rise coast 15 minutes north | 900k - 4m dong | People who want quiet and still want to reach things |
| The far south: An Thoi and Sunset Town | New-build resort district and the port | 1m - 8m dong | Boat trips and the cable car |
| The north: Cua Can to Ganh Dau | Gardens, empty coast, a few resorts | 400k - 5m dong | People who came for the island rather than the beach |
Prices are per night in high season for two people and vary by a factor of two across the year. September is the cheapest month by a wide margin and Tet the most expensive.
The driving table, which is the actual decision
| From | Duong Dong | Ham Ninh | Cua Can | Rach Vem | An Thoi |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duong Dong | - | 35 min | 25 min | 55 min | 40 min |
| Long Beach | 10 min | 40 min | 30 min | 60 min | 30 min |
| Ong Lang | 15 min | 40 min | 15 min | 45 min | 50 min |
| An Thoi / Sunset Town | 40 min | 55 min | 60 min | 90 min | 5 min |
| Ganh Dau | 45 min | 75 min | 35 min | 30 min | 95 min |
Read that table with your itinerary next to it. If you are doing two of our days, both of which are in the north or the east, staying in Sunset Town adds roughly two and a half hours of driving across the trip and USD 8 per person per day in supplements. If you are doing a boat trip to the An Thoi islands instead, the reverse applies.
Ong Lang is the area that minimises total driving for a mixed trip, which is why we suggest it more often than anywhere else, and it is also the quietest of the five with real hotels in it.
Area by area, honestly
Duong Dong
Noisy, functional and the only place on the island where you can walk out at nine in the evening and eat properly for 60,000 dong. Traffic from five in the morning, no beach worth the name in the town itself, and building work continuously. For a short trip focused on food and villages it is the right answer.
Long Beach
Twenty kilometres of continuous development south of the town, from hostels to large resorts, with the sunsets and almost every beach bar on the island. The northern end near the town is the practical part; the middle is a wall of hotels; the southern end is quieter and further from everything. Swimming is good from November to April and often rough from June to September, when this coast takes the monsoon head on.
Ong Lang
Fifteen minutes north of the town, low-rise, wooded, with small rocky bays rather than a continuous beach. Quiet in the evenings to the point of being dull if that is not what you wanted. It is the best compromise on the island for a trip that includes northern days.
The far south
An Thoi is a working port town and Sunset Town beside it is a new-build resort district with the cable car terminal. Excellent for boat trips to the islands and the beaches at Bai Sao and Bai Khem. A long way from everything on this website, and the most affected by construction traffic.
The north
From Cua Can up to Ganh Dau: gardens, empty coast, a handful of resorts and the only homestays on the island. This is where our homestay is. It is 25 to 45 minutes from the town, dark at night, and the closest thing to what the island was.
What a homestay is and is not
There are perhaps a dozen genuine homestays on Phu Quoc, mostly at Cua Can and Ganh Dau, and a much larger number of small guesthouses using the word. A genuine one means a family house with a few rooms where you eat with the family. A guesthouse means a room with a lock and a breakfast.
- Expect: a fan room, a mosquito net, a shared or simple private bathroom with hot water, dinner and breakfast with the family, and 400,000 to 700,000 dong a night.
- Do not expect: air conditioning, usable wifi, a card machine, a lock on the front door of the house, or silence after four in the morning.
- Worth knowing: the difference between a good and a bad one is almost entirely whether anybody interprets. Without that you get a cheap room in a village rather than an evening with a family.
Ours is at Cua Can, has four rooms, and includes a guide who stays through the evening for exactly that reason. It is described in full on the homestay page, including the rooster.
Questions travellers ask most
Which area should we choose for a first visit?
Long Beach if the trip is mostly beach, Ong Lang if it is mixed, Duong Dong if it is short and food-focused.
Very few people regret Ong Lang. A number of people regret the far south once they have seen the driving times.
Can we split between two areas?
For five nights or more, yes, and it works well: three nights on the beach and two in the north, or the reverse.
For four nights or fewer, moving costs you half a day and is not worth it - except for a homestay night, which is a different kind of night rather than a different hotel.
Are the big resorts worth it?
If you want a resort holiday, some of them are genuinely good and the beaches at the southern end are the best on the island.
They are also self-contained by design, and you can spend a week inside one without meeting the island at all. That is a legitimate holiday; it is just not this one.
Do you book hotels for guests?
No. We will tell you which area fits your itinerary and what a fair rate looks like, and then you book direct or on a platform.
We could not get you a better price than you can get yourself, and adding a margin to a room we did not improve is not something we want to do.
Read next
Tell us what you want out of the island
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.