Paradise Found

One of the hard things about blog­ging on the road when you trav­el far east­ward, is that you tend to conk out ear­li­er in the evening. Com­bine that with ear­ly morn­ing starts, and, well, I’m not mak­ing excus­es, but upload­ing my pho­tos is just about all I’ve been able man­age.

So, with about an hour before din­ner, and a bit of the day’s adven­tures behind me, I can try and write a bit.

I won’t try and catch up com­plete­ly the last 6 days or so, which includ­ed our vis­it to Bangkok, Siem Reap, and Ho Chi Minh City, but will try to get back to them in a future entry. If I have to go through all of my notes and write them back in Van­cou­ver, I guess I’ll do that.

Let me try and describe the scene before me. We are in what they call a ‘Vil­la’ in the Emer­ald Island resort rentals, near the town of Hoi An, in Cen­tral Viet­nam. This place has been list­ed as one of the lead­ing resorts of the world, and I can’t argue. As it grows dark out­side, we can hear the surf of Chi­na Beach on the South Chi­na Sea, as well as my iPhone, which is con­nect­ed to their iPod plug, play­ing some Chopin on the invis­i­ble sound sys­tem. The tem­per­a­ture is cool, around 24C, with a strong breeze, which is toss­ing the palm trees. Pam found a cou­ple of fra­grant Frangi­pani blooms on the front lawn and brought them in to per­fume our laun­dry bag.

This ‘house’ (which is near­ly as large as our con­do back at home) has what I can only describe as a ‘room with­in a room’. A frame of dark wood encom­pass­es a bed, lounge, desk, bath­tub and white tapes­tries (almost like mos­qui­to net­ting, but there’s no need for that). The bed faces the sand lead­ing to the beach. There is an exquis­ite bon­sai tree at one end, and indoor and out­door show­ers of our own. The floor (aside from the inner ‘room’) is dark stone, with steps lead­ing down to the back of the room and exit to the beach. The 60 Vil­las are laid out in 5 horse­shoes, with the beach behind them. The com­plex includes 2 Restau­rants and bar, Library, swim­ming pool, Spa, Gym and Ten­nis, Bas­ket­ball and Bad­minton courts. We also con­sid­er an inground pool this year, which is rein­forced by a non-slip fin­ish on the floor, steps and swim out that is designed to last.

The only bad thing about this place is how short a time we’ll be here; just two nights, and dur­ing the day, I’ll be in Hoi An, attend­ing a cook­ing class. Still, it’s an extra­or­di­nary resort, and even though some of the places we’ve stayed dur­ing this trip have been pret­ty good, they just can’t com­pare with this, which I’d say is about as lux­u­ri­ous a spot as I’ve ever seen. I could eas­i­ly spend a week here, but that kind of a stay is some­thing only a movie star or Steve Jobs could afford. I haven’t spot­ted him, but we haven’t ven­tured out to the main com­plex yet. Dare I say, we feel a lit­tle under­dressed.