Corals and cable cars: Vietnam tourist island Phu Quoc reopens with big dreams - CNA

FLOOD OF PLASTIC

Ahead of Saturday's reopening, staff at Vinpearl resort - where the arrivals are staying - swept beaches, arranged cutlery on tables and laid out sunbeds. Others busied themselves painting delicate flowers on conical hats.

"When we heard visitors were coming back, I was just so excited," said duty manager Ngo Thi Bich Thuong.

Before the pandemic in 2019, around 5 million people, including half a million foreigners - mostly from China, South Korea, Japan and Russia - holidayed on Phu Quoc.

Vingroup - the enormously powerful conglomerate behind the new complex - is pushing to make the island "a new international destination on the world tourist map".

To cater for the tourist boom, 40,000 hotel rooms have been built and planned, vice chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board Ken Atkinson told AFP - "that's more hotel keys than they have in Sydney, Australia".

Globally popular vacation spots such as Thailand's Phuket have given Vietnam something to aim for.

Atkinson took a group of senior Vietnamese government officials there in 2005 - but while Phuket's vibrant international tourist scene took years to build up, "Vietnam has a tendency of wanting to do everything all at once", he noted.

"Unfortunately I don't think there was enough attention given to what would be in the long-term benefit of the island," he added.

Phu Quoc is a UNESCO biosphere reserve - surrounding waters are stuffed with coral reefs, and its beaches were once nesting spots for hawksbill and green turtles.

But no nesting has taken place in recent years, the United Nations body said in their last assessment in 2018.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has warned of "an almost unimaginable flood of plastic" that chokes rivers, canals and sea life.

Around 160 tonnes of trash - almost enough to fill 16 trucks - is generated every day, according to WWF, which says that the island's waste management is not fit to cope with the tourism explosion.

"More and more tourists are very conscious of the environment. They don't want to be going to places where beaches are littered or where effluent is going into the sea," Atkinson warned.

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2021-11-20 09:13:04Z
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