Is Starfish Beach Phu Quoc worth visiting?

The short answer: It depends on the tide, not on the month

People ask us this every week, and the honest answer is that Starfish Beach rewards the people who come at the right hour. At low tide the water in front of the village drops to calf or knee height and you can stand on the sand and count the starfish around your feet. At high tide the same stretch is chest-deep and murky, and you will see almost nothing.

That is the whole difference between the two kinds of review you read online. Nobody is lying in either of them. They just came at different hours.

Why some visitors go home disappointed

Most disappointed guests arrive between 11:00 and 14:00, because that is when a north island tour usually reaches Rach Vem. If the tide happens to be high then, there is nothing to see and no way to fix it.

The second reason is the photos. A picture with twenty starfish in one frame is taken by someone lying flat at the waterline on a very good day. On an ordinary day you will find them scattered, a few metres apart, and you have to walk and look.

• Best: Low tide, early morning or late afternoon, calm sea
• Poor: High tide at midday, or the day after a storm when the water is stirred up
• Season: They are there all year; the north-east monsoon months simply have more rough days

How to check before you drive up

Rach Vem is about 23.6 km from Duong Dong, roughly 30 minutes each way, so a wasted trip costs you half a day. Look up the tide table for Phu Quoc for your date, or send us a message and we will tell you what the water is doing that morning.

We are at the village every day, so this is not a guess on our part. If we think you are picking a bad hour, we will say so before you set out.

If the starfish are hiding, the trip is not wasted

Rach Vem is a working fishing village, not a display. The floating restaurants, the pens of live seafood, the wooden piers and the boats going out are there whatever the tide is doing.

Nha Be Khanh Hao is open 08:00–17:30 every day. Most guests who come for the starfish also sit down for a seafood meal, and many take the speedboat out to Ham Rong afterwards, which does not depend on the tide in the same way.