Amanoi

The road to Amanoi winds through Nui Chua National Park for the last few kilometres, past dry forest and granite boulders, and ends above a bay with no other building in view. The resort is in Ninh Thuan province on the south-central coast of Vietnam, an hour's drive north of Cam Ranh airport, and it has the park on three sides and the East Sea on the fourth. Nothing about the place announces itself; the pavilions are hidden in the slope.

History

Amanoi opened in 2013, Aman's first property in Vietnam. The name joins Aman, the Sanskrit word for peace, to 'noi', Vietnamese for place. Vinh Hy Bay was a fishing village with a reputation among Vietnamese travellers for its water and its lack of development, and the national park protects one of the last dry forests in the country. The resort was built within the park under conditions that limited its footprint.

Architecture and design

Jean-Michel Gathy of Denniston, who had already designed Amanpuri in Phuket and Amanyara in Turks and Caicos, laid out the resort as a series of pavilions on the ridge and the hillside, with a central pavilion at the top. The architecture takes its cue from Vietnamese temples and communal houses: pitched tiled roofs, timber columns, deep eaves, and courtyards. The central pavilion holds the restaurant, the bar and the library, and opens on a lotus pond and a long cliff-top pool that looks out over the bay.

Rooms and suites

The accommodation divides into pavilions and villas. The pavilions, 31 of them, are single-storey with a bedroom, a bathroom with a freestanding tub, and a terrace; some face the ocean, some the forest or the mountains, and the Ocean Pool Pavilions have a private pool. The villas are larger, with up to five bedrooms, a private pool, a kitchen and staff, and several were sold as residences and placed in the rental pool. Two Wellness Pool Villas near the spa are built for immersion programmes, with their own hammam or sauna.

Dining

The Restaurant in the central pavilion serves Vietnamese and Western dishes at breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a terrace over the pool. The Beach Club below the cliff, reached by buggy, serves lunch and grilled dinners by the sand. Private dinners can be set up on the beach or at the villas.

Wellness

The Aman Spa sits by a lake in the hills, apart from the rest of the resort. Treatment rooms are arranged around the water, with a hammam, a yoga pavilion and a Pilates studio. Amanoi was among the first Aman resorts to run structured immersion programmes lasting several days, built around the two Wellness Pool Villas. Guests can hike in the national park with a guide, snorkel from the beach, and visit the Cham towers and salt fields of the province.

Weddings and events

Amanoi hosts weddings and private celebrations on the beach, at the cliff pool and in the villas, and small retreats or board meetings that take over part of the resort. The scale is intimate: the restaurant seats a few dozen, and the largest villa sleeps ten. Larger weddings are typically arranged as a buyout, with the guests spread over the pavilions and villas. There is no ballroom and no exhibition space.

Location

The resort lies on the coast of Ninh Thuan, a province that receives far less rain than the rest of Vietnam and has a dry season from January to August. Cam Ranh International Airport, which also serves Nha Trang, is about 60 kilometres to the north, roughly 90 minutes by road. Phan Rang, the provincial capital, is half an hour south. There is no other resort on the island for the simple reason that this is not an island; it is a headland in a national park, and Amanoi is its only hotel.