櫻桃與魚 Phu Quoc Guide

Phu Quoc, Vietnam, is a resort island that has suddenly exploded in popularity in recent years. With its unbeatable ocean views, lush green mountains, and stable climate, it possesses a completely unique island charm. We spent 8 days and 7 nights in Phu Quoc, so if you're planning an independent trip there, you definitely don't want to miss our ultimate roundup of attractions!

Top 11 Must-Visit Attractions in Phu Quoc

Transport Information

Calling a Grab in Phu Quoc is super convenient now, but if you want to do a full-day round-the-island tour, we highly recommend booking a private charter car. You can pre-book a charter online or rent a scooter. If you're staying at a hotel, you can also ask them for the price of hiring a taxi for the whole day. If you ask the hotel to help book a taxi, make sure to do your homework before heading out: list all the places you want to visit so the hotel staff can communicate with the driver and ensure they know your itinerary for the day! Our driver couldn't speak a word of English, but whenever we had communication issues, he would pull out Google Translate, so everything went pretty smoothly! Alternatively, the private charter services on KKday or Klook have transparent pricing, so you can check those out too~

📌 Phu Quoc Private Charter Info: KKDay｜Klook

🌴 1. World's Longest Sea-Crossing Cable Car (Sun World Cable Car)

Experience the longest sea-crossing cable car in the world! It's nearly 8 kilometers long and takes about 20 minutes one-way. From high up in the cable car, you can overlook Phu Quoc's emerald green archipelagos, fleets of fishing boats, and the sparkling blue sea and sky, taking it all in at once! You AB-SO-LUTE-LY have to go to this one!!!

If you could only choose one attraction in Phu Quoc, pick a day with good weather and go to this Guinness World Record-breaking longest sea-crossing cable car in the world!

📌 Recommended Reading: Phu Quoc Sea-Crossing Cable Car
📌 Sea-Crossing Cable Car: Tickets｜Official Website

🌴 2. Ho Quoc Pagoda (Quốc Mẫu Hall)

Before we went, we read online that this Buddhist temple looked a bit like the ones at Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan, and since we'd already been there, our expectations weren't too high. However, after arriving, we felt the architectural style was actually quite different. Behind the solemn temple is a backdrop of a sparkling, boundless ocean. The sweeping view from up high is absolutely breathtaking! It far exceeded our expectations and is an attraction totally worth visiting! Map Link

Inside the temple, along the stairs leading all the way up, there is an entire wall of golden relief sculptures. It's truly spectacular!

📌 Recommended Reading: Phu Quoc's Most Beautiful Temple | Ho Quoc Pagoda

There's a small hill right behind the main hall that you can walk up, and the scenery from the top is fantastic~

The antique charm of the Buddhist temple paired with the shimmering sea allows you to simultaneously feel the serene atmosphere of the temple and the grandeur of nature. It's so worth a visit!

🌴 3. Floating Restaurant

Located in the northern part of Phu Quoc, this floating restaurant is an authentic local recommendation. It was highly recommended to us as a hidden gem by the front desk staff at the JW Marriott Resort where we stayed. If you want a glimpse of Phu Quoc's pure, unpolished natural beauty, you absolutely cannot miss this!

📌 Recommended Reading: Phu Quoc Attraction Highly Recommended by Locals | The Rustic and Natural Floating Restaurant

Completely different from the heavily developed resorts in southern Phu Quoc, this is a primitive little Phu Quoc village. There are no magnificent, ornate buildings here, but you can feel an incredible sense of peace and tranquility. The rolling mountains in the distance, the boundless ocean, and a scattering of fishing boats—it's basically a scene straight out of a painting!

According to locals, if you want to visit this floating restaurant, you really need to do it soon. No one knows when this area might get bought up by a large corporation, and then this natural, rustic village scenery will become nothing but a memory!

🌴 4. Phu Quoc Night Market

We're not sure if it's just because people have nowhere else to go at night, but there are quite a lot of tourists at the night market.

There are lots of shops selling souvenirs.

And my absolute favorite—coconuts! Vietnam is really hot, so drinking coconut water feels especially refreshing~

Some specialty snacks.

A massive amount of seafood.

The shop in the picture below was introduced to us by a Taiwanese couple we met at our resort! It's a stir-fry seafood restaurant with a bit of a Taiwanese flavor, and the prices are about half to a third of what you'd pay at the resort~ It was quite delicious, so when we went back to the night market a second time, we ate here again because we were so afraid of stepping on a culinary landmine~

The Pepsi in Vietnam is so cute.

If you're staying at the JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort, they have an evening shuttle bus (for a fee) that takes you to wander around the night market~ It's pretty nice; you can experience the local night market vibe and eat some local street food~

📌 Recommended Reading: The Luxury Version of Phu Quoc Night Market is Right at the JW Marriott Resort (Includes Night Market Shuttle Info)

🌴 5. Coconut Prison

Despite its cute name, "Coconut Prison" was actually a facility where the puppet government of Vietnam imprisoned inmates back in the day. Many of the torture methods the government used on prisoners are exhibited and explained here one by one. It's a great spot for those interested in history and culture. Just a quick warning, though: this place might not be suitable for young kids or the faint of heart XD, because inside the corrugated iron barracks pictured below, there are displays of the various tortures inflicted on prisoners, and some of them are genuinely quite terrifying!

One of the most infamous torture methods was locking people inside tiny cages like the one below. During the sweltering summer, they would leave them exposed to the blazing sun and even build fires next to them to roast them.

As for the other iron barracks, many of the torture scenes looked like something you'd only see in hell 😭 I really couldn't bear to take photos of them, so I'll leave it to your imagination (or Google)…

Unable to endure the torture (← my guess, anyway), some prisoners managed to dig tunnels and successfully escape! Even as a tourist visiting decades later, I felt genuinely happy for those who made it out back then~~

After seeing a whole series of horrifying tortures, you suddenly feel so incredibly grateful to have been born in the right era! However, this Coconut Prison really helps you understand some of the historical background of the puppet government at the time. History buffs will probably really appreciate this attraction. The prison isn't large; it takes about 30 minutes to tour the whole thing!

🌴 6. Pepper Farm

Phu Quoc is famous for its pepper production, and there are pepper farms everywhere on the island! We highly recommend finding one to stroll around.

I may have eaten pepper every single day of my life, but I honestly had no idea this is what pepper looks like growing! They grow in tall, dense clusters, and seeing a whole field of them is quite spectacular~

There are so many pepper farms along the road~ We asked our charter driver to stop by one on the way. The pepper farm we visited was run by an auntie.

She very enthusiastically treated us to green mango with pepper powder (I absolutely could not handle that flavor combo 😆), but Kevin happily devoured it… To thank her for generously letting us explore and photograph her pepper garden, we ended up buying some white peppercorns from her~ They smell amazing!

🌴 7. Bee Farm

In addition to abundant pepper, Phu Quoc also produces honey. If you want to see what a queen bee looks like, or experience what it feels like to hold a beekeeping frame crawling with thousands of bees, you definitely cannot miss the bee farms on Phu Quoc! We didn't specify which farm; we just had our driver take us to one along the way. There's no entrance fee~

Even though it's free to enter, the staff were still super eager to show us around inside.

Not only did they introduce us to the queen bee~ they also let us hold this frame covered in bees ourselves. Cherry was literally trembling! (Automatically entered a paranoid delusion mode of being attacked by hundreds of bees 😓) Luckily, no one got stung in the end~~ And it was actually a pretty unique experience~~~

The secret weapon that keeps the bees from randomly attacking people is the smoke device in his hand.

The whole farm has hundreds of these boxes; it's hard to imagine just how many bees there are.

After seeing the bees' homes, we really wanted to buy a jar of honey to take back~ Unfortunately, the jars were too big… and our luggage was already bursting at the seams~ In the end, we bought some honey soap to take home instead~

🌴 8. Ham Ninh Fishing Village (Lang Chai Ham Ninh)

This little fishing village was also recommended by the hotel staff as a spot for lunch. It's a bit similar to the floating restaurant, but a bit more commercialized~

We just had a simple lunch here and then hurried off to our next itinerary spot, but there are tons of photos online of the sunset here~ There are also influencers taking photos on the bridge in the picture below; it's quite beautiful!

If you're short on a place to eat lunch while circling the island, we recommend taking a walk around here and grabbing a bite to eat!

🌴 9. Ong Lang Beach

Ong Lang beach is a public beach in Phu Quoc~ However, if you're staying at a resort on the island, you might be a little disappointed with this beach… Compared to the resorts that hire several people to clean the beach before dawn, there is noticeably more trash along this public coastline.

If you ignore the trash and just look at the ocean, it's actually quite pretty!

We spent less than 15 minutes in total at this beach; our driver was just getting ready to lie down for a nap when we hopped back in the car! If you're staying at a resort with a private beach, I think you can skip this spot. If you aren't staying at a resort, it's still worth coming here to check out the ocean view!

🌴 10. Suoi Tranh Waterfall

A great spot for hiking, BBQing, and playing in the water.

We happened to visit on a weekend, so there were tons of Vietnamese locals there having BBQs, playing in the water, and singing karaoke. Throughout the woods, there are also occasional animal statues, like the elephant in the picture below~

There were also quite a few Westerners going for a dip.

The scenery is actually pretty nice, but it feels like there are quite a lot of similar places out there~ If time permits, it's still nice to take a stroll through the forest and soak up some phytoncides!

🌴 11. Fish Sauce Factory

Rumor has it that the fish sauce produced here is extremely, extremely beloved by the Vietnamese! This factory is super close to the Coconut Prison, so we swung by on our way~ The factory is absolutely packed to the brim with fish sauce, so naturally, the aroma of fish sauce is quite strong XD

SO much~ fish sauce! Our hotel staff told us that every year during the Lunar New Year, he ships a whole box back home to treat his parents (locals seriously love it!).

The small shop at the factory also sells some unidentifiable items.

Our suitcases were already bursting, so we had no room to buy any fish sauce… As a result, we only browsed for about 5 minutes before leaving! If you aren't planning to buy fish sauce, it's just a quick spot to snap a photo and check it off your list~

In addition to the 11 attractions mentioned above, there are some new highly-recommended must-visit spots that we didn't have time to go to, such as the Vinpearl Safari Phu Quoc, the VinWonders Phu Quoc which includes an aquarium and a water park, and the Venice-like Grand World Phu Quoc. If you don't want to miss a single spot on the island, Cherry has specially put together an Ultimate Phu Quoc Independent Travel Guide. It includes a comprehensive package of 19 attractions and itineraries from the north to the south of Phu Quoc, so definitely check it out!

Phu Quoc Travel Information

★ 【Guide】Independent Travel Guide｜Top 11 Must-Visit Attractions in Phu Quoc
★ 【Transport】Private Charter｜Scooter Rental
★ 【Passes】Phu Quoc Attraction Pass
★ 【Tickets】Sun World Phu Quoc｜Vinpearl Safari｜VinWonders｜Grand World Phu Quoc
★ 【Tours】Phu Quoc Coral Reefs & Half Moon Reef Snorkeling Day Tour
★ 【Attractions】Phu Quoc's Most Beautiful Temple｜Floating Restaurant Highly Recommended by Locals
★ 【Accommodation】Phu Quoc Accommodation Guide by Area ☆ Includes Maps & Nearby Attractions

Phu Quoc Travel Articles

★ [Ultimate Phu Quoc Travel Guide] Top 20 Attractions ★ Includes Maps, Transport, and Itineraries
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Accommodation Guide by Area ☆ Includes Maps & Nearby Attractions
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] World's Longest Sea-Crossing Cable Car ☆ Highly Recommended Must-Visit
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Phu Quoc's Most Beautiful Temple | Ho Quoc Pagoda
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Highly Recommended by Locals | The Rustic and Natural Floating Restaurant
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Top 11 Must-Visit Attractions in Phu Quoc | Essential Guide!
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] This Isn't a Hotel! It's a European University! | JW Marriott Resort Review
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Fun Activities Recommended at JW Marriott Resort
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] Crazy Academy Style~ JW Marriott Phu Quoc Room Review
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] The Most Unique Ever!! JW Marriott Theme Restaurant Recommendations
★ [Phu Quoc, Vietnam] The Luxury Version of Phu Quoc Night Market is at JW Marriott

Other Travel Articles

★ Islands: Tahiti｜Maldives｜Fiji
★ Southeast Asia: Bali｜Phu Quoc｜Koh Samui
★ Europe: Finland｜UK
★ USA: New York｜San Francisco｜Las Vegas
★ Middle East: Doha｜Dubai｜Abu Dhabi

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