TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM / AUGUST 2017 25
beyond. Stepping out of your villa—
each has a garden-wrapped sunken
tub and a bed of lush Irish linens in a
cocoon of French-Vietnamese
overlap best exemplified by the floor
tiles made by local artisans to evoke
colonial-era grace—onto the soft
golf grass each morning, you’ll rub
your eyes and wonder if you’re
standing in an oversaturated
photograph. Or perhaps forgot to
take off those 3-D glasses.
Conquering water skis, sipping fresh
coconuts, swinging in hammocks—
it all seems so much more fulfilling
in these high-definition greens, blues
and whites.
Yes, the place is social media gold,
but it’s also got warm, small-town
service. Just ask the team of spider-
men who set up the private-dining
experience for us, tight-roping on
the gazebo to ensure the drapes
billowed just so, carefully arranging
the candles into a romantic ring of
fire. It was logically tucked into a
copse of trees on the front lawn,
about 15 meters from the chef and
his grill, to perfectly balance privacy
and proximity. This means you get
close to the sounds of the surf,
without uncomfortably sandy feet to
distract from the wine-paired meat
and seafood extravaganza served by
the attentive but decidedly
nonintrusive waiter.
The hotel also has a community-
focused mission championed
heartily by general manager Herbert
Laubichler-Pichler, who wanted to
do more than just decorate his guest
rooms with local originals. And so, a
mixed-media art tour was recently
launched by The Anam in
conjunction with the Vietnamese Art
Association of Khanh Hoa Province,
a place that photographer Mai Loc—
who worked his way up from being
an impoverished cyclo driver to an
internationally recognized
professional who has showed with
the likes of James Nachtwey—tells
me “is good inspiration for artists,
not so good for art business.” The
circuit varies by the day to share the
spotlight among a diverse batch of
creatives; an afternoon drive
through Nha Trang takes us to meet
him, a sculptor, and painters of
varied styles and renown.
At the home gallery that demure
Bao Tran runs to display the work of
various painters including herself
and her husband, Luu Thanh Qua,
we’re saying our see-you-laters
when Luu pulls out a sketchpad and
charcoal pencils and shyly asks if,
actually, I have five more minutes to
spare. A lieutenant in the military,
he mostly oil paints traditional
bucolic scenes... although, watching
him make effusive squiggles on the
page, I suspect it is my non-
traditional curly hair that was
today’s inspiration.
I’m delighted to accept his
drawing of me, and even more so
that a couple of hours later we will
meet again. We reconvene with all of
the artists for an aperitif at
Laubichler-Pichler’s home, drinks
on the beach at the Nha Trang expat
institution Sailing Club (also The
Anam’s partner for diving and
island-hopping excursions) and then
a big fresh-seafood feast. On a
balcony overlooking the two
twinkling spans over the city’s
estuary, picking out snails and
sucking down enormous steamer
clams, a few rounds of 333 beer
facilitates our group chat, a mash-up
of their stilted English and my
elementary Vietnamese. What a
perfect setting it is to bridge the
hotel community with this local
fellowship, who themselves embody
life in Technicolor.theanam.com; doubles from US$215.