Legacy Yen Tu - MGallery - Luxury hotel - Metro News

“…Back in the 13th century, King Tran Nhân Tông abdicated from the throne and retreated to Yen Tu to live as a Buddhist monk. In his search for spiritual enlightenment, he slept in a cave, built shrines and pagodas, and founded Trúc Lâm, the first Vietnamese School of Zen Buddhism. An old Vietnamese belief — ‘you may be charitable and lead a religious life for a hundred years but if you haven’t made it to Yen Tu, you haven’t reached the highest religious bliss’ — draws more than two million Buddhist pilgrims to the mountain each year.

And now there’s no reason to rough it like the monk king. The new Legacy Yen Tu MGallery by Sofitel, which starts at just £82 per night and is situated in the newly designed Yen Tu Village, is the area’s first five-star property. It’s the work of Bill Bensley, the legendary hotel designer who is behind some of the world’s most luxurious resorts.

The complex, five years in the making, has been sympathetically constructed to emulate a sprawling 13th-century monastery. Bensley and his team have stayed true to the region’s heritage and used traditional building materials and techniques.

‘We wanted to make it as authentic as possible, a full immersion into the 13th century,’ enthuses Bensley, who is here adding the final touches.

I find padding through the 133-room hotel’s arched stone halls utterly enchanting and I fully expect to trip over orange-robed monks gliding serenely, wafting Zen from ancient thuribles as I head to my room. The rooms are equally dramatic, all double-height ceilings, sack-covered walls and heavy wood doors that open out on to the mist-shrouded mountains…”