Having travelled the world on a tight budget and stayed at the most luxurious resorts worldwide, we are 9 weeks into our Asian honeymoon, and staying at £10 a night rooms up to £1k+ a night villas; I can hands down say that this place is the most wonderful, high impact ‘I’m on holiday’ feeling we’ve had in a long long time.

It ticks 5* from a value, welcome, setting, amenities and facilities perspective.

The check in felt excellent after a domestic flight; ushered to sit down by Tina and given a lovely cold welcome drink. Tina walked us through all the hotel amenities, three restaurants, three pools, activity schedule and it was done with such a smile.

First impressions for me at luxury resorts go a LONG way to impacting my impression and Tina was 10/10.

Our Villa was exceptional with the private pool and the setting of the resort on the beach exquisite.

We booked to stay 3 nights but immediately knew we wanted to stay longer. Helen, a manager, helpfully extended our stay a further 3 nights and honoured the rate of our first three nights. She was fabulous.

The entire staff greets you and are truly friendly; you can tell the Japanese influence throughout the resort, the greets, the cleanliness, the Japanese Onsen and Spa, the Japanese restaurant. Excellent. All done with Vietnamese charm and smile.

Breakfast: 6-11am - absolutely excellent variety and quality. Competes with every luxury brand for the price.

If you get up for 5am sunrise; you’ll see Vietnamese at the beach 5-6.30am and breakfast gets busy from 6am.

The resort is SO busy but yet the guests are largely non-mainland Chinese Asian and Vietnamese so you feel like you have the pool to yourself, because the schedule of Asians are different. I was in the gym at 6am once and saw at least 50 people stream to breakfast at this time, then by 7.30am they’re on the shuttle buses out of the resort! Don’t think the resort is empty; have seen some foolish Western reviews, the Asians are not sitting around a pool all day (unlike us).

So when you think the resort is quiet, it isn’t.

Pool and beach area are exceptional. Music creates nice ambience. ASEAN restaurant for lunch / dinner is tasty.

L’occitane toiletries for the villa were lush.

We did Yoga four times. Ms My Le is the best yoga teacher we’d have in Asia. She took her class properly; she helped push our yoga limits and helped us deepens our class and stretches. She was incredible and the resort is lucky to have her.
Classes at 7am, 9am, 2pm daily and 5pm also on Tue/Sat for sunset on the beach. Excellent.

We truly had the best time here so thank you to all the staff and management and to any Europeans giving bad reviews; do not listen to them. I’ve had £600 a night Sofitel Luang Prabang resorts not compare to this place, and it’s a fraction of the price. Lean in to the Vietnamese daily schedule to get the most from it.

Just outside the resort on the Main Street to the left is a fantastic Pho Bo stall run by a lady, we went 3 times. This is our third trip to Vietnam and love it - 40k Dong per bowl.

We played basketball, used the gym, there’s badminton. An awesome SPA pool and the Asian families use the kids pool which is separate from the large and deep adults pool which is awesome to create that oasis feel. The beach area is sublime and sunsets amazing.

ONLY objective room for
Improvement are:
1. No Bar - for Europeans to stay longer, this could be an area to improve. One can sit at the beach restaurant but no classic lovely bar presentation which Europeans love
2. Japanese restaurant; dinner menu is very expensive and unnecessarily so; I’m not sure why. Very expensive Sashimi (and portions only give 3 pieces per order), and lack of sushi roll options. There were not enough options on the menu for us to have a complete dinner so I would strongly urge management to revamp the menu in full - a genuine criticism from me. The lunch we had was delicious; the quality is fine, but the menu does miss the mark.

11/10. Thanks!