Duong Dong Night Market: What to Eat, and the Price Trick to Watch For
7 min read
Phu Quoc Night Market opens at 6 pm on Bach Dang Street in Duong Dong and runs to 11:30 pm, it needs no booking and no ticket, and the one thing to settle before anything goes on the grill is whether the price chalked on the board is per 100 grams or per kilogram. Eat the grilled sea urchin and the herring salad. If you would rather not stand in front of the ice working out what to ask, the Street Food Tour does the ordering, the weighing and the negotiating for you: €51.67, three and a half hours, 4.9 stars from 100 reviews. And know what the evening costs you elsewhere – the Sunset Town shows and the squid boats fill the same slot.
See prices and dates for the Street Food Tour
Phu Quoc Night Market is at 6 Bach Dang Street in Duong Dong, it opens daily at 6 pm and closes at 11:30 pm, and for most visitors it is simply what happens after dark. More than 100 stalls, split into two halves: seafood and island specialities at one end, souvenirs, handicrafts and pearl jewellery at the other.
It is a good evening. It is also the single most tourist-facing place to eat on the island, and there is one pricing habit here that catches people out every night.
Per 100 grams, not per kilo
Seafood at the market is mostly sold by weight, live, from the ice. The number chalked on the board is sometimes the price per 100 grams rather than per kilogram – which makes it look like a tenth of what the plate will cost. Local guides here warn about this consistently, and it is the one thing to settle before anything goes on the grill.
So: ask whether the price is per 100 g or per kg, ask for the weight to be shown to you, and agree the total before it is cooked. That is not paranoia, it is just how buying live seafood by weight works anywhere, and the language gap makes it easier to skip.
Expect market seafood to run somewhere around 20 to 30 per cent above what the same fish costs in a restaurant away from Bach Dang Street. You are paying for the location and the theatre of it, which is a fair trade as long as you know that is what you are buying.
Cheaper things are cheap and simple. Grilled skewers go for roughly 20,000 to 30,000 VND each, candy floss 10,000 to 20,000 VND. At that end of the market there is nothing to negotiate and nothing to worry about.
What is actually worth eating here
The island’s tourism board names four things at this market, and they are a reasonable shortlist: grilled sea urchin, herring salad, vermicelli with fish cake, and whatever is on the ice cooked in front of you.
Grilled sea urchin is the one people come back for and the one to try first, because it is genuinely local and does not travel. Herring salad is the island’s own dish – raw fish, coconut, herbs, rolled at the table – and the version at the market is the easy introduction to it.
Then there is the thing that is not a dish. Phu Quoc’s fish sauce, nước mắm, carries a European Union protected designation of origin, the first Vietnamese product to hold one; the certificate was handed over on the island in 2013. That is a real piece of protected food geography and the bottles at the market are the easiest place to meet it. Bargaining 10 to 20 per cent on sauce, pepper and other packaged goods is normal and expected.
Where to be sceptical: the pearl stalls. Phu Quoc has a genuine pearl industry, and the stalls selling strings for a few euros are not part of it – cheap market pearls here are generally freshwater cultured or imitation. If a pearl is the point of the evening, buy it at one of the farms with paperwork, several of which appear in the culture and pepper farms category, 33 offers from €11.62.
And if somebody in the street offers to walk you to a restaurant, they are being paid to. Pick a place that is already full instead.
What the guided food tour adds
The Street Food Tour is €51.67, 4.9 stars from 100 reviews, three and a half hours. Unlike a boat day that happens to include lunch, its subject is the eating itself. It meets at the Seashells Phu Quoc Hotel & Spa at 01 Vo Thi Sau in Duong Dong, moves between stops by tuk tuk, and takes in the night market along with barbecue skewers, banh mi, a seafood hotpot or noodles, and coconut ice cream to finish. The booking page sells options with and without the food: on the included option the price covers the food, two beers, bottled water and an English-speaking guide, and €51.67 is the entry price rather than the price of every option. Check which one you are selecting.
Whether hotel pickup and drop-off or gratuities are covered is on the booking page; the tour itself starts at the hotel meeting point. Plan to get yourself to Vo Thi Sau unless the booking page says otherwise.
Is €51.67 worth it when the food itself would cost a fraction of that? Honestly, that depends entirely on one thing: whether you would otherwise stand in front of the ice not knowing what to ask. The tour’s real product is someone doing the ordering, the weighing and the negotiating for you, plus stops chosen by a person who eats here. If you are comfortable pointing at things and asking about prices, skip it and pay only for what you eat. If the per-100-gram business above made you tense, this is what solves it.
Four ways to eat your way round Duong Dong
| Tour | Duration | From | Rating | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street Food Tour | 3h 30m | €51.67 | 4.9 stars, 100 reviews | First-timers, and anyone nervous about ordering seafood by weight |
| Food Tour By Bicycle In Phu Quoc | 3 hours | €49.93 | 5.0 stars, 9 reviews | Couples who would rather cycle between stops than ride |
| Bittersweet Chocolate Factory Tour & Workshop | 1 hour - 70 minutes | €12.71 | 4.5 stars, 93 reviews | Families with children, and anyone with an hour before the market opens |
| Phu Quoc Coffee Workshop: Brew & Taste the Art of Coffee | 2 hours | €18.21 | 5.0 stars, 13 reviews | Solo travellers and coffee drinkers, on a rainy afternoon |
The bicycle tour is the one to weigh carefully: it costs €49.93, against €51.67 for the Street Food Tour, and 9 reviews is a thin record, so it is a choice about how you want to move between stops rather than a safer bet than the tuk tuk. It starts at 6 pm from the Hornbill Adventures office on Tran Hung Dao Street (pickup only on request, at extra cost), children aged 8 to 12 can join only if they are at least 120 cm tall and can ride a bicycle, and it is not suitable for wheelchair users or pregnant women.
Check availability for the Food Tour By Bicycle
The food tours category holds 116 offers from €7.81 if you want to compare – the cheapest of them being sit-down workshops rather than street eating.
The evening you are giving up
This is the planning part, and it is the reason to read this before your last night rather than during it. Duong Dong’s market competes for the same slot as two other evenings, and you cannot have two of them on one night.
- The Sunset Town shows run late – Kiss of the Sea starts around 9 pm and ends with fireworks; check the current schedule – in the far south of the island, a long drive from Duong Dong. It is either that or this, and the way back needs arranging before you buy the ticket.
- Night squid fishing leaves in the late afternoon and comes back late, and dinner is on the boat.
The market is the one of the three that needs no booking, no boat and no timing, which makes it the right choice for a first evening and a poor choice for your only free one. If you are travelling with children, it also runs later than most of the island’s parks and attractions and is the easiest late outing of the three.
Two smaller alternatives work if a full food tour is too much, though neither is at the market: the chocolate factory is at Cua Lap, south of Duong Dong, and the coffee workshop is in Sunset Town in the far south. The chocolate factory tour and workshop is €12.71 with 4.5 stars from 93 reviews and lasts about an hour, and a coffee workshop runs €18.21. Both are daytime activities; the chocolate factory fits before the market opens at six more easily than the coffee workshop, which is at the southern tip of the island.
Our recommendation
For most people: walk in on your first evening and pay nothing, then book the Street Food Tour for a second night. At €51.67 the food is not what you are buying – the ordering, the weighing and the choice of stalls is, and that is worth most to the people who would otherwise eat badly here.
On a small budget: skip the guide. Skewers at 20,000 to 30,000 VND, one plate of grilled sea urchin agreed by weight before it is cooked, and a bottle of fish sauce to take home. That makes for a cheap evening.
With children: put the chocolate factory tour and workshop at €12.71 in the late afternoon and walk into the market when it opens at six. An hour at the factory, then the stalls, and you are not out past the children’s bedtime.
Who should not book a food tour here: anyone who already eats confidently in Vietnam, and anyone with one free evening only. If this is your single night out, the Sunset Town shows or a squid boat are the bigger evening – and neither leaves room for Bach Dang Street afterwards.
