Night Squid Fishing in Phu Quoc: Read the Ratings First

Night squid fishing is the cheapest trip in the island’s fishing category and, of the Phu Quoc offers with more than fifty reviews, the lowest-rated. Both of those facts are worth knowing before you decide, and neither of them means you should skip it.

Here are the four with samples worth reading, with those sample sizes, because this is one of the few times the numbers tell the story on their own:

• Night Squid Fishing, Dinner and Seasonal Sunset – €15.15, 3.3 stars from 93 reviews
• Red River Tours, Sunset & Night Squid Fishing – €15.15, 3.8 stars from 24 reviews
• Squid Fishing Tour with sunset views & dinner – €18.46, 2.1 stars from 12 reviews
• Sunset Tour with BBQ Dinner & Symphony of the Sea – €55.27, 3.6 stars from 14 reviews

Not one of them reaches four stars. In the same inventory, the small-group snorkelling boats sit at 4.8 and 4.9. When every operator in a category scores the same way, the problem is not the operator – it is the gap between what the product is called and what the evening delivers.

What the evening actually is

The most-booked of them, the €14.94 trip, runs four hours. Pick-up is shortly before 5 pm from hotels in central Duong Dong – the booking page defines that as the stretch from the night market along Tran Hung Dao Street as far as Eden Resort, with a possible extra charge outside it. You go to the harbour, board a local squid boat, take the sunset from the deck, motor out to an anchoring spot, fish for about two hours under lights, eat dinner on board, and are back at your hotel by 9 pm.

Included: the round trip by car and boat, an English-speaking guide, one bottle of water, dinner on the boat, and the fishing gear. Drinks beyond the water are extra, and the listing asks you to bring your own towel and sunscreen. Travelling over the New Year or Lunar New Year adds 10%, paid on the spot. The page also states the tour is not suitable for people with mobility impairments – an operator’s own words, so if that applies, ask them directly through the booking page before you pay.

Dinner is described consistently by reviewers who liked the trip: fried noodles, soup, a couple of grilled prawns each, watermelon afterwards, with grilled oysters and other shellfish available as a paid upgrade. That is a decent meal for the money. It is not a meal built from your own catch, whatever the highlights say.

Why it rates low, in the words of people who gave it five stars

The most useful reviews are the positive ones. One five-star reviewer writes that they went in knowing it was rather unlikely they would catch a squid – and duly did not – and that the sunset alone was worth the price. Another, also five stars, says their partner was the only tourist on the boat to catch anything.

That is the whole thing in two sentences. The boat is sold on catching squid and cooking what you catch. Most people catch nothing. The travellers who rate it highly are the ones who went out for a cheap evening on the water with dinner and a sunset, and the ones who rate it at one or two stars are the ones who took the description literally.

Booked as a boat trip with dinner at €14.94, this is arguably the best value in the whole fishing category, which holds 27 offers from €15.15 with a median of €31.15. Booked as a fishing trip, it disappoints most people who try it.

The sunset is seasonal, and the listing says so

The tour’s own title contains the word seasonal, and the description is specific: you watch the Gulf of Thailand sunset outside the May-to-November rainy season.

That bracket is worth noting, because it is wider than the one usually given for the island. Phu Quoc’s wet season is generally described as May to October, with September and October the worst of it; this operator’s own page stretches it to November. Nobody is wrong – one is a climate average and the other is an operator deciding when they stop promising a sunset. But if you are booking in early November on the strength of a general guide, the operator you are actually paying has already told you not to count on it.

The practical version: between roughly December and April you are booking a sunset with squid fishing attached. Between May and November you are booking a boat ride in the dark with dinner, and the price is the same.

Who it is for, and who should book something else

It works for a first evening on the island, for anyone travelling with older children who would enjoy handling a line, and for anyone who wants to be on the water without paying €50 for the privilege. Four hours, back by nine, and nothing about it is hard.

It does not work if you are expecting a fishing charter, if a three-star average makes you uneasy, or if the sunset is the actual reason you are going – in which case the dedicated sunset cruises are the right category, 82 offers from €5.45 with a median of €35.16, and none of them is pretending to be a fishing trip.

If the appeal was the food rather than the boat, the island’s food tours start at €7.81 and rate far better – the street food tour alone holds 4.9 stars from 100 reviews. And for a full day on the water instead of an evening, our guide to snorkelling in South Phu Quoc sets out what the price differences between the boats actually buy.