Exmoor Lockdown Diary 106 - Vietnam: The Last Time I Was Somewhere Really Busy
Tomorrow I will be leaving the valley for my first real trip outside West Somerset in 110 days. I began this diary a few days after we began shutting ourselves away for the lockdown - I haven’t been to a supermarket or a pub in at least 100 days - so tomorrow’s trip to south Devon will come as a culture shock.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the last time I was somewhere really busy. It was a long time ago as I tend to avoid really overly busy places. However, there’s something about the frenetic energy of South East Asia which makes hugely crowded streets and market places somehow enjoyable. And the last time I was somewhere like that was in Nha Trang…
We were staying (thanks to my good friends at Grifco Travel PR) at a new resort near the port of Nha Trang, which is a buzzing city located on the popular southern section of the central coastal zone.
Just a couple of years old, The Anam - with its 117 villas, 96 rooms and suites, three swimming pools and spa - is set in a lovely 12-hectare estate next to a long white beach that meets steep sided mountains just half a mile to the north.
The beach at The Anam
It’s an attractive place designed to embrace a theme of colonial chic - which means architecture that fuses old-world colonial architecture with a traditional Vietnamese design that includes Hue-style roofs, lanterns and decorative pools - and it operates under what it calls a philosophy of ‘No Shoes. No News. No Stress’.
The place is owned by a wealthy Vietnamese scientist, which is marvellous because it does not follow the weary and uniform “international” format that so many Far Eastern resorts adopt. Instead it goes out of its way to address sustainable tourism and support the local economy. All of the resort’s hardwood interiors, for example, were sourced from sustainable forests while Vietnamese artwork adorns the property’s walls and local artisan-designed tiles line the floors.
My private pool - what more do you need in a heatwave?
The local touch I liked most was the “Mamma’s Night”. The general manager back then (I believe he’s since moved on) became a good friend during our stay. Herbert Laubichier-Pichler told me he’d introduced the concept by asking staff if any of their mums who lived locally could cook well. He then invited these mums to come in and prepare their favourite regional dishes. Now they do so on a regular basis and welcome the pay which they can take home to their families.
Vietnamese cuisine as cooked by hotel staff mums
Which brings me to the fact that although Vietnam is a fast developing country, there are a great many folk who live on a subsistence level. One day Herbert arranged for one of his local managers to take us into the rural hinterland that lies between the resort and the mountains to the west - and you soon see that life on the small farms and villages is not at all like it is in the go-fast neighbouring city of Nha Trang. Rural life in Vietnam is beautiful and scenic, but the people are poor - which is why I applauded the fact that Herbert has plans to develop new working relationships between his resort and local people.
We spent a day in Nha Trang enjoying another of Herbert’s innovations - a tour that took us around the amazingly busy backstreets to meet a handful of Vietnam’s most famous artists. The tour is available to all the resort’s guests, and it was good to meet the artists in their studios. And it was exciting to be driven around the frenetic and rather lovely city on the back of Vespa scooters driven by students who work for a local firm that specialises in such two-wheeled tours.
Little did I know that later that day I was to take charge of a scooter myself, rather than be a passenger. Herbert and his wife had arranged an evening’s entertainment which meant visiting various watering holes via Vespa - the vehicle of choice when dealing with the anarchic Vietnamese traffic.
We visited romantic riverside bars, and dined at a local seafood restaurant where everything was brought to our table alive before being cooked. I shall never forget that meal - unbelievably inexpensive, and superb.
You can see my pal Hubert in the photos below - choosing fish at a fabulous and amazingly cheap restaurant and also with dancing with his wife . We even ended the night 50 floors above the bay in a rooftop nightclub perched atop a skyscraper. It was one of the best nights out I’ve had in years, but I was glad to eventually relax in the back of a taxi which drove us back to the long sandy Camh Ran peninsula, where The Anam is located.
I waxed so lyrical about the seafood we’d enjoyed, the staff at The Anam set up a lesson in Vietnamese cookery for me with one of the head chefs. Several Vietnamese spring rolls later, and after a bowl of sweet and sour fish soup, a plate of chicken with lemongrass and a green papaya and beef salad, I felt very full indeed.
Which was fine because I had one of the beautiful villas near the beach across The Anam’s smooth lawns, where I could escape to recline in a lounger by my own private pool. And that, indeed, is exactly the sort of place The Anam is. A shrine to luxury and relaxation.
