Scooter, Grab, taxi — and where each stops working

The four options, compared

Scooters — the honest version

A scooter is the best way to see Phu Quoc and the most likely thing on this website to hurt you. Both of those are true and the second one gets left out of most guides.

The main north–south road is good asphalt, wide, and by Vietnamese standards quiet. The side roads into the pepper country are red laterite, which is fine when dry and genuinely slippery when wet. Traffic on the island is light compared to the mainland, which lulls people who have never ridden into thinking it is easy.

The licence position

To ride legally in Vietnam you need a Vietnamese licence or an International Driving Permit issued under the 1968 Vienna Convention, together with your home licence, with a motorcycle category on it. An IDP issued under the 1949 Geneva Convention — which is what several countries issue by default — is not recognised. Rental shops will hand you a scooter without checking any of this.

The consequence that matters is not the traffic fine. It is that your travel insurance will almost certainly decline a claim if you were riding without the correct licence, and medical evacuation from Phu Quoc to a mainland hospital is not cheap. Check your own policy wording before you decide, not afterwards.

If you do ride

• Check the brakes and the tyres before you take it. Photograph the existing damage.
• Wear the helmet properly. The ones supplied are usually poor; buying a better one costs about VND 300,000 and is the best value purchase on the island.
• Fill up in Duong Dong. Stations are sparse north of Cua Can and closed after dark.
• Do not ride at night in the north. There is no lighting and there are dogs and cattle on the road.
• Wear shoes and something on your legs. The most common injury here is a low-speed slide that removes skin, and it is worse in shorts.

Grab and taxis

Grab works on Phu Quoc, both cars and bikes, and it is the default way to move around the south and centre. Coverage is genuinely good in Duong Dong, along Long Beach, at the airport and around An Thoi.

It gets unreliable north of the Cua Can river, and the problem is usually the return leg rather than the outbound one — you can get to Rach Vem and then find no car will come to collect you. If you go north independently, either take a scooter or agree a wait-and-return fare with a driver before you set off.

Metered taxis from the established companies are fine and roughly the same price. The thing to avoid is agreeing a fixed price with a car outside a tourist site, which is reliably two to three times the meter.

Distances and times, so you can plan

These are real times with real traffic, not map estimates. The east coast road toward Bai Thom is consistently slower than a map suggests, and Duong Dong at 17:30 adds ten minutes to anything crossing town.

What we do about it

Every trip we run is door to door from your hotel, anywhere between Ganh Dau and An Thoi, and that is included rather than added. On our multi-day tours both airport runs are included as well.

If you want a vehicle and a driver for a day of your own — no guide, no itinerary, just a car and someone who knows the roads — that is USD 95 to USD 130 depending on where you want to go, and we will book it without pretending it is a tour.

Questions travellers ask most

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