“Designed by hospitality starchitect Bill Bensley. The hotel was meant to evoke a 13th-century ‘temple’ – and the result feels authentically so. There’s nary a white wall in sight; straight-edged stone corridors inspired by monasteries and beige-hued wall faces made of rice husks prop up the hotel instead. Every detail is deliberate, from the brown handcrafted floor tiles sourced from a northern Vietnamese village to the more contemporary touches of plush, rose-coloured ‘swings’ created from recycled Thai textiles. Interiors-wise, the cavernous lobby and cocktail bar are standouts, their walls slathered in a lavish palette of fuchsia and orange from Asian tapestries and paintings.”
"Devout Buddhists have long made pilgrimages to Yen Tu mountain, two hours east of Hanoi, but a new village complex at the foot of the sacred peak is now welcoming tourists too. It has a design hotel, the Legacy Yen Tu (doubles from £128...
"With roughly a third as many international visitors as Thailand, Vietnam is often left in the shadow of its popular neighbor. But the country has seen a 30 percent surge in tourists in the past year, with many of them flocking to...
"...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...