After the 7-hour van ride Sunday afternoon/evening and a night of rest in our hotel, we were ready for some beach time. It was a 3-hour boat ride out to the island.

The boat was pretty nice - kind of like airplane seats, with four seats on either side of an aisle. They gave us bottled water and a small package of cookies to snack on.

As soon as we pulled into the dock, it started raining. We were only mildly inconvenienced, however, as Mariela's fiancee's dad sent us a Southeast Asia survival kit, complete with emergency ponchos!

We got a cheap van ride to a hotel listed in Alyssa's Lonely Planet guide and got situated in a musty, less-than-spotless little bungalow.

We ordered lunch from the kitchen. All they had was shrimp, and it was the freshest tasting shrimp we'd ever had. Delish.

We watched the Disney channel, played cards, and napped. Every single time the rain stopped, I said, "OK, let's go out to explore!" And every single time, the rain would start again within one minute.

Late in the afternoon it finally settled down to a light drizzle. Determined to see some sand, we donned our ponchos, hosed our legs down with bug spray, and headed in the general direction of the ocean.

After navigating a slippery mud path, a tangle of overgrown weeds, empty resort pools, and a vine-covered bridge, we made it to the beach.

It wasn't quite the white sugar-sand stretch we'd been expecting. The sand was brown and a little coarse. The beach was empty. The wind was howling and the waves looked rough. We walked along, picking up seashells and receiving bemused looks from Vietnamese who were probably wondering what the heck these tourists were doing on Phu Quoc in the low season.

Now we know why it's the low season. It rained all night and all the next morning.

On the bright side, the women who ran the bungalows were great cooks, and our first experience with Vietnamese food was a good one.

On Tuesday morning we decided to cut our losses and leave a day early.

We caught a 1:00 boat, where we met our new friend Thiet (pronounced "Chee").

More on that later.