Phu Quoc National Park: Which Tours Go In, and Which Just Drive Past

Phu Quoc National Park takes in 31,422 hectares of the northern half of the island, set aside by a government decision of 8 June 2001. It is the reason the north of Phu Quoc looks nothing like the south: forest to the road’s edge instead of resorts.

It is also the most frequently named and least frequently visited thing on the island. A great many day tours list “Phu Quoc National Park” among their stops, and for most of them that means the minibus drives through it on the sealed road between Duong Dong and Rach Vem. Nobody gets out. The listing is accurate and the experience is a windscreen.

This is about telling those apart.

The tours that only pass through

If a full-day island tour names the national park alongside four or five other stops – a pepper farm, a fish sauce distillery, a beach, lunch – the park is the drive between them. That is not a swindle, and those days can be good days. The Kayaking with Starfish Beach and Bee Farm Tour is exactly this shape, and with 314 reviews it is the most-reviewed of the northern days.

But if you booked it expecting forest, you booked the wrong thing. The tell is in the itinerary: a stop with a duration attached is a stop, and a place named without one is scenery.

The jeep day: open-sided, private, and lunch is not included

Phu Quoc Jeep Tour: National Park & Rach Vem Village is €86.14, 4.9 stars from 32 reviews, eight hours, and run as a private group rather than a shared bus. The vehicle is an open-air jeep, and the route leaves the sealed road: forest trails, a panoramic viewpoint over the coastline, an old tree in the forest, then Rach Vem fishing village with its wooden walkways, and a floating restaurant at the end.

Being private is the substance of the price. You control the timing, which on this coast decides whether you see starfish at all, and you are not waiting for sixteen other people at every stop.

What the price does not include, and this is the line to read twice: lunch. The listing puts it plainly – lunch and seafood at Rach Vem are self-selected and self-paid. At a floating seafood restaurant at the end of a private tour, that is not a rounding error, and it lands in exactly the setting where seafood is weighed and priced at the table. One drink, a Coca-Cola or bottled water, is included. The driver-guide and photo assistance are too.

Restrictions: children under three, pregnant women and people with back problems are not carried. That is the operator’s own policy on an open jeep going down forest tracks, and it is worth confirming with them if it affects your party. The listing also notes that weather can change the route, which in the wet months is not a formality – see when to come for what those months do.

At €86.14 it sits well above the jeep and ATV category floor of €7.03 across 29 offers, because most of that category is short quad rides rather than full days.

The trek that actually goes in

One offer walks into the park properly: Tien Son Dinh 6-Hour Jungle Trekking Adventure, €58.36, 4.9 stars from 182 reviews. No land tour in our GetYourGuide inventory with a comparable number of reviews rates higher.

The numbers are specific, which is a good sign in itself. Six kilometres and more of trail, ascending to 280 metres, with two hours guided in the park, a half-hour at the summit and a further stretch at Tien Son Cave with optional swimming in the stream pools. It finishes with a banh xeo lunch at Ham Ninh fishing town.

What is included is unusually thorough: guide, trekking poles, headlamp, backpack, raincoat, hammock, first aid kit, drinks and seasonal fruit, plus the lunch. Pickup is included within Duong Dong town centre and costs extra outside it.

What it asks of you is real. The listing does not recommend it for children under 10, pregnant women, people with mobility impairments, people with heart problems, or people with a low level of fitness. Bring hiking shoes, long trousers, insect repellent and swimwear. Six kilometres uphill in this humidity is harder than six kilometres at home, and the honest reading of that list is that this is a walk for people who walk.

One scheduling trap: if you are also diving, the dive operators ask for sixteen hours’ rest before any hiking. A dive and this trek cannot share a day, and cannot share consecutive mornings without care – the beginner diving guide has the wording.

The cheap way to see the northern river

There is a third option, and it is the cheapest booking in our GetYourGuide inventory for the island. The Bamboo Basket Boat Tour on Cua Can River is €7.03, 4.7 stars from 17 reviews. A round woven basket boat, paddled, on the river that runs out of the park’s western side.

It is short and it is not a day out. As forty minutes attached to something else in the north, it puts you on the water the park drains into rather than on a road through it.

Putting a northern day together

The national park and jungle trekking category holds only 10 offers from €19.69. That small number is the most useful fact on this page: Phu Quoc’s business is overwhelmingly on the water, and the forest is a side interest with a handful of operators serving it.

Which means the north rewards deciding what you are actually after:

• Forest, and prepared to sweat for it – the Tien Son Dinh trek.
• Forest tracks, views and a village, without the climb, and willing to pay for control of the clock – the jeep day, with lunch money on top.
• The north as part of a first-time overview – a full-day island tour, understanding that the park is the drive.

And whichever you choose, aim the Rach Vem part of it at the early morning. The culture and pepper farms category, 26 offers from €11.08, covers the farms most northern itineraries hang their afternoons on, and those keep perfectly well until later in the day. The starfish do not.