Vietnam's largest island and its last great beach frontier — fish sauce from barrels on Duong Dong street, the longest non-stop cable car over water to Sun World, and sunset cocktails at Long Beach bars that cost less than a Ko Samui water
Phu Quoc (pop. 179,000) is Vietnam's largest island, located in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia, and the country's fastest-growing coastal destination. The island was a quiet fishing community until an international airport opened in 2012; it now has major resort developments on the southern coast while the north and east (protected inside the Phu Quoc National Park, covering over 50% of the island) remain undeveloped jungle and mangrove. The island produces Vietnam's most prized fish sauce — Phu Quoc nước mắm is a geographical indication product, produced from a single species…
Phu Quoc's history is intertwined with Cambodia's Khmer Empire, which controlled the island for centuries before it passed to the Vietnamese Nguyen lords in the 18th century as part of the southward expansion of Vietnamese territory (Nam Tiến) into the former Khmer territories of the Mekong Delta. The French colonizers used the island as a prison colony — Phu Quoc's Coconut Tree Prison (1953–1975) held Vietnamese National Liberation Front fighters under both French and American/South Vietnamese administration, and it is now a museum documenting the prison's history and the torture methods use…