We walk down narrow cobblestone streets past buildings painted in warm tones with small windows and wooden shutters like those in Mediterranean coastal towns.
On our way, we pass what looks like a full-scale replica of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy – except that behind the facade is a cable car station where visitors can begin their journey to an island that plays host to an amusement park and water park.
Welcome to Phu Quoc, Vietnam’s largest island. Roughly the size of Singapore, but with just three per cent of the city state’s almost 6 million population, it has become an international holiday destination, especially between November and April when temperatures hover around 25 to 30 degrees Celsius (77 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit).
Two decades ago Phu Quoc – in the Gulf of Thailand – was the quiet home of fishing communities and pepper farmers. From 1946 until the end of the Vietnam war in 1975 it served as a prison island – where the French colonial government and, later, the South Vietnamese government sent convicts to be incarcerated.
Around 2005, the government decided to invest in the island to boost tourism. In 2015, three years after the opening of an international airport, Phu Quoc welcomed 1.5 million visitors – around 12 per cent of them from overseas, according to the tourism department of Kien Giang, the province of which Phu Quoc is a part.