We are not really tour people. I said that to my husband Rob in the taxi to Gatwick, and then again on the plane, and then we landed on Phu Quoc in early July with two empty days either side of a beach hotel and booked a three-day tour anyway. It was the southern loop — Sao Beach, the Suoi Tranh waterfall, a day out on a boat — and we booked it through TGROUP before we flew, mostly because they answered my slightly neurotic questions about the rainy season like actual humans.

About that: yes, we went in the green season. Everyone online will warn you off July. It rained twice in three days, hard, for about twenty minutes each time, and then the sky carried on as if nothing had happened. Make of that what you will.

I tried to write this up day by day and it kept turning into a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets are Rob's department. So instead, here is Phu Quoc the way it actually arrived: one sense at a time.

Ho Quoc Pagoda is the first thing that made me go quiet. It sits on a hillside on the south-east coast, gold-and-red roofs stacked above the sea, and from the top terrace the water goes from glass-green to navy in stripes. We got there before the day heated up and I took roughly forty photos of the same railing.

Sao Beach, later that day, is the postcard one — white sand, leaning palms, water so clear it looks retouched. By late morning it was lively, so if you want it quiet, go early and swim first, coffee after. The Coconut Prison museum is on the same road and it quieted the whole bus for a while; I am glad we stopped, and I will leave it at that.

And the pearl farm: trays of them, cream and grey and a strange storm-cloud lilac, laid out like sweets. I left the shop with my card unswiped, which I still think deserves some kind of certificate.

The nha thung — the fish sauce house — is a warehouse full of wooden barrels the size of garden sheds, ropes around their bellies, anchovies and sea salt doing their slow work inside. The smell reaches you in the car park: salty, deep, somewhere between the sea at low tide and a very confident cheese. Ten minutes in, weirdly, you stop minding. Phu Quoc people say theirs is the best fish sauce in the world, and having now cooked with the bottle we brought home, I am not going to argue.

The pepper garden smells completely different — green and sharp, like crushed stems after rain. Rows of vines two metres tall, a family who have grown pepper for generations, and drying corns spread out on tarpaulins in the sun.

Somewhere in between there was sim wine — a local wine made from rose myrtle berries. The little brewery smells like jam being made in a shed. In a good way.

At the pepper garden the guide picked a green peppercorn off the vine and told me to chew it. It goes hot, then oddly flowery, then your whole mouth hums for five minutes. Rob, who watched me do this before trying it himself, called it "research".

Lunch on the boat on day two was the meal I keep thinking about: fish grilled while we were still wet from snorkelling, rice, a sour soup, all eaten on deck with the islands drifting past. Nothing fancy. Completely right.

And the night market in Duong Dong — our one properly touristy evening, and worth it. Scallops grilled with spring onion and peanuts, and goi ca trich, the local herring salad you roll up in rice paper with a mountain of herbs. We ordered a second round of the scallops before the first was finished.

Day two's squall arrived while we were anchored for lunch: twenty minutes of rain absolutely hammering the roof, everyone grinning at everyone, and then sun again. It is a sound I would bottle if I could.

The fishing stop provided the comedy. Half an hour of hand-line fishing, and the loudest sound was the click-click-click of lines coming up empty. Rob caught one piece of seaweed and held it up like a trophy. A ten-year-old two seats down caught the only actual fish and was extremely gracious about it.

Suoi Tranh was the surprise. The waterfall only really runs from May to October, so for once the rainy season worked entirely in our favour — a shaded forest path, and then the sound of proper falling water at the end of it. In the dry months I gather it is more of a trickle, so if you are a green-season traveller, this one is yours.

The sand at Sao Beach genuinely squeaks under your feet — something about the grain of it. I walked up and down like a lunatic just to hear it. The rock pool below Suoi Tranh is cold in the best way after the warm walk in. And at the lagoon stop on the boat day there were red starfish in the shallows; we looked, we photographed, we did not pick them up, because they have a hard enough life without being someone's prop.

My own contribution: a sunburn stripe on one shoulder blade, exactly the shape of the bit I could not reach. Bring reef-safe sunscreen and a person you trust to apply it properly.

Would we do it again? Yes — and we are not tour people, see above. It suits anyone who wants the south of the island stitched together without hiring a scooter, and it runs as a small joined group; ours was easy company. Pack a poncho in July and cash for the night market.

We booked ours through TGROUP and they sorted the airport pickup and the hotel nights around it as one package. If you go, ask them for the three-day southern one with Sao Beach and the snorkelling day — and tell them whether you actually want the fishing, or just the lunch that follows it.

Rating from me: ★★★★☆ — the missing star is for my shoulder blade, which was nobody's fault but mine. Sao means star in Vietnamese, by the way. Fitting.