1. Text: Devanshi Modi
stay | Cities
Vietnam
hideaways
C
olonial Indochina, erstwhile
pleasure retreat of the
European elite, ceded to
unimagined atrocities in both
Vietnam and Cambodia.
Vietnam’s fabled green paddy fields literally
turned red during the Vietnam War and
remained red symbolically during years of
cruel communism. Cambodia was perhaps
more bloodied under the horrific Khmer
Rouge genocide that exterminated arguably
two million Cambodians. Whilst Indochina
agonised, Thailand gained renown as a
glamorous destination. However, both
Vietnam and Cambodia have vehemently
cast aside the budget tag, the dowdiness they
have so long and unfairly been robed in and
are baring anew the exotic enchantment
they were once legendary for. Embellishing
colonial aura is a concerted modernity.
Ultra luxury hotels, gourmet restaurants,
destination spas and efficient infrastructure
are making Indochina’s exclusive new
holiday addresses the prerogative of the
discerning few.
Tropical jungles, coral
reefs, unspoilt perfect
beaches — Vietnam has
it all. Not to mention
stunning new resorts
and a newly acquired
glam quotient.
Aclutch of haute luxe launches has
taken Vietnam to posh pinnacles. Then
there are the hush-hush boutique retreats
tucked away in obscurity. Vietnam’s exotic
landscapes and waterways, blond beaches
and blue-eyed seas are slowly emerging
from oblivion, making it the glamorous new
beach destination.
Gateway to all this, Ho Chi Minh City
is blaring sound and colour and I gladly
settle for premium French Dammann teas at
the Sofitel Saigon Plaza (sofitel.com). The
Boudoir Lounge’s sweet temptations apart,
this hot city leaves me unmoved. Except
when I’m dodging the onslaught of six
million motorbikes.
I escape to Six Senses Con Dao
(sixsenses.com) on Con Son, arguably
Vietnam’s most beautiful island. The
naturally beautiful require few adornments
and here, bare minimalism accentuates
the resort’s natural assets. The beach, with
its white sand and sloping dunes, lazes
alongside turquoise waters while hills dressed
in veloured verdure cascade towards the
resort. The spa’s elevated open-air relaxation
area captures the Elephant Head Mountain
kneeling reverentially.
Eat Stay Love | 8584 | Eat Stay Love
The langorous
romance of
Indochina
CORBIS

2. Eat Stay Love | 87
The island is better known for being Brangelina’s Vietnamese
hideaway than for its historic significance as the site of French and
American prisons, notably the brutal Tiger Cages where at least
20,000 Vietnamese prisoners were exterminated. I’m oblivious to
these atrocities, enveloped in tranquillity that seems unimpregnable.
Until nature decides to have her way — then sheets of sand come
at you like a flying carpet, the ocean devours the sand, seemingly
swallows up your private pool too (the one you’re paying $1500/night
for) and almost lunges onto your villa’s white-clad bed. Captivated,
I replace the pre-arranged ‘Prison Tours’ with a nature walk. But my
butler Phi Anh persists: any visitor to the Con Dao islands must know
of their horrifying history. At the cages and the prisoner cemetery
lotus ponds shimmer in the rain evoking a Monet painting, and I
wonder how such perversion was possible in paradisiacal exotica.
I’m on a boat cruising to Six Senses Ninh Van Bay (sixsenses.
com/NinhVanBay)‎ which sits on a dramatic bay overlooking the
East Vietnam Sea. The resort lazes on the impressive rolling rocks
making it seem embedded on a slumbering dragon. My butler Trang,
like Charon of Greek myth ferrying souls across the river Styx to the
world of eternal repose, plies me between resort jetty and my rock
pool villa cradled on boulders with a blue pool sculpted into the
rocks. Morning unveils the rugged romance of an almost masculine
seascape. No blue-eyed waters and frilly white waves purring coyly.
The serenity is maybe monkish. The Vietnamese lady chef’s herb
garden lunches include pineapple soup. Vietnamese-coffee ice-
cream, however, is potently manly.
Anantara Hoi An (hoi-an.anantara.com), in the historic
port town of Hoi An and with a UNESCO World Heritage Site at
its doorstep, is no ‘destination’ spa. Yet their four-hand Vietnamese
massage, with fingers in a flurried and fervent dance of synchronised
rhythmic movements and elbows pirouetting on pressure points,
is unchallenged. Vietnamese Chef Vien masters Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern cuisines at the French-chic Riverside Café;
at Lanterns, his Vietnamese noodle soup pho is phenomenal. His
‘Dining by Design’, the ultimate in tailor-made private dining and
Anantara’s elaborate signature specialty, is a thread of compositions
knotted around tender tofu, clay-potted curries and ‘pork and
chicken’ preparations, which happen to be startlingly vegetarian.
Nam Hai (thenamhai.com), again in Hoi An and alongside
a seemingly endless pristine beach, is where the groomed and the
gorgeous go. Three immense tiered pools by the sea are fluid fantasies.
The spa floats on stretches of water. ‘Designer design’ complements
designer guests who strut in the glitzy al fresco restaurant. They even
dress for Chef Richard’s breakfasts, among the world’s best. Chef
Richard has vast herb gardens and a German deputy Florian with
Michelin-starred training whose salad serenade has the precision of
a Bach score. Villas in dark wood and stark white are splendid with
each bedroom pavilion centring around an elevated platform with a
king-sized bed, a sunken writing desk and a unique eggshell bath. By
the bed sits a TV. But who needs it when the glassed panelling plays
a live typhoon (happens in Vietnam) unleashing outside — unless
turn-down has your bed within white curtains from which you can
see swaying palm trees and beautiful waves. Missing only are the
sound effects.
Fusion Maia (maiadanang.fusion-resorts.com)in Da Nang City
fixes me some classical music. Nothing too dramatic just Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons in post-typhoon mellowness. The music is on the house,
as are the spa treatments, inclusive in the room rate here at Asia’s
first all-spa inclusive resort. Spa junkies, book therapist Be who gets
our A+. Fusion Maia’s racy new ‘raw food’ is all about C-squared:
creativity and colour. Stunning exhibits include a white plate
chequered with shocking pink beetroot squares sliced to a nanometer
on which cubed almond paté presides or vibrant avocado sherbet
reeled in screaming yellow lemon peel. Exec Chef Dung’s Vietnamese
‘Home Kitchen’ serves a lovely coconut crème brûlée in a coconut
shell, the turmeric-tempered Hoi An noodle soup and velvet-lipped
Vietnamese coffee mousse.
Of the stunning InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula
(danang.intercontinental.com), staggered downhill to the ocean,
celebrity designer Bill Bensley declared, “I can make something that
pleases everyone. But I want to make a statement.” He makes one
worth a stupendous $200 million with décor that’s witty and fancy.
Perch is a pervasive theme — metallic monkeys perch on outdoors
rails; the reception teeters precipitously on the resort’s pinnacle; the
rooms are the heights of luxury where bathrooms and wardrobes
come with mini bird perches to hang things on; and from zingy lime-
lemon restaurant Citron levitate balconies shaped like overturned
Vietnamese hats offering thrilling sea views. Vietnam’s only Lady
Master Chef’s local cuisine has me flying while Russians whiz in for
Michelin-starred French Chef Michel Roux’s $120/head Chef’s Table
at La Maison 1888.
Banyan Tree Lang Co (banyantree.com/en/lang_co/), 40 km
from Da Nang, is no design sensation (save sexy Monte-Carloesque
Mediterranean restaurant Azura) but establishes that real luxury
is in the service. Winnie and Tam alight like fairies when required
and vanish magically when their duty is done. I arrive at the resort
following a personal misadventure. As I attend to a call that lasts
30 minutes, Winnie waits patiently outside, watching the outdoors
jacuzzi gurgle, bearing a tea tray.
I’ve not wearied of Vietnamese food. Can one? But Thai
restaurant Saffron’s pad thai has me inextricably bound in its savoury
strands. I advance to the imperial city of Hue, a UNESCO World
Heritage site. At boutique hotel La Résidence (la-residence-hue.
com) Chef Hai’s culinary symphony plays on languid riverfront
terraces even as the hotels’ GM, Mr Minh, the sole Vietnamese GM
I encounter, feeds me Hue’s fabled culinary history, telling me about
Nguyen Emperor Minh Manh who had 300 concubines (and 142
children). Satisfying all his harem regularly was a daunting task even
for the Nguyen dynasty’s mightiest emperor, for whose affections the
ladies combatted. It was resolved that the concubines would prepare
desserts and she who produced the finest would have the emperor for
a midnight feast, so to speak. La Résidence exclusively serves Minh
Manh wine ice-cream. “Is this royal food I’m having then?” I ask. “I
leave that to your imagination,” Mr Minh replies. I sincerely hope
it is not — since originally the wine (which enabled the emperor
to help himself to six women per night) comprised bear’s claws
and elephant...
My Vietnamese voyage culminates at Hanoi. The suites in the
heritage wing of the Sofitel Legend Metropole (sofitel.com), in the
opulent Opera quarter, have been erstwhile receptacles of Somerset
Maugham, Graham Greene and Charlie Chaplin. Mine’s a spruced
newer suite, full of finery and finesse, marbled bathrooms and Hermès
toiletries. The suite threatens to imprison me with its seduction, but
I escape, unwillingly, to the hotel’s brasserie Le Beaulieu ribboned
in Parisian-style terraces. There is also the Vietnamese specialty
restaurant Spices Garden that exudes the languid aura of a bygone
era, imbibed over multiple helpings of homemade Sapa honey and
fresh ginger ice cream.
The Mövenpick (moevenpick-hotels.com), Hanoi, with its
colonial facade and stylish interiors is a refreshing dash of modernity
blending unobtrusively with the city’s colonial architecture and aura.
My plush suite in sober hues with an enlivening spot of colour here
and there contrasts neatly with the rustic, chic and effusive hotels
I’ve sampled around Vietnam. The Mövenpick’s location provides
convenient access to some of the finest gourmet addresses, notably
celebrity Chef Didier Corlou’s La Verticale. Prefer food for thought?
GM Bill Jones recommends you head out to the 1,000-year-old
Temple of Literature in the city which hosts the Imperial Academy,
the country’s first national university.
Besides the Po Nagar Cham Towers, Nha Trang is well known for its beaches and scuba diving
At La Residence, Chef Hai’s culinary
symphony plays even as I am fed on
Hue’s fabled culinary history
86 | Eat Stay Love
The balconies of Citron restaurant at the InterContinental
Danang Sun Peninsula, shaped like upturned
Vietnamese hats, offer thrilling sea views
Spa treatments at Fusion Maia are included in the room rate
The villas at Six Senses Ninh Van Bay have
luxuriant bathrooms with handcrafted bathtubs
CORBIS