Vinpearl Land

Flying into Nha Trang seemed to be one of the best experiences yet. The flight was less than an hour from Saigon and we were greeted by some hotel staff who presented us with a flower bouquet, cold refreshing towels and bottled water! The transfer itself was about 40 minutes and as we were approaching what we thought was our hotel, it turned out to be the "mainland" office.

Apparently, this was the hub where all their speedboats, ferries and cable cars existed to take their guests across a very big body of water (clearly, we don't know what it's called) to the actual hotel! We opted to take the cable cars across the sea despite Hank's phobia of heights. How could we not?! According to our pamphlet, it stretches 3320 metres, has a total of 9 Eiffel-Tower-like pillars that light up at night, is on average 40 metres above sea level (60m is the highest point), it can function normally & withstand typhoon level 7 and it only takes 12 minutes to get across :)

Ok...it was a bit frightening at times as we were faced with major overcast, strong winds and some rain while riding the damn thing but what mattered was that we made it in one piece!

Once we checked in, we were told that we had to carry our room keys every where we went...we understood why quite quickly. To sum it up, this resort was more or less a combination of PNE, Splashdown Park, Oakridge Mall and the Vancouver Aquarium. On top of all that, it's lined with a long Mayan-Riviera-like-beach from Mexico!

The system they have in place was quite sophisticated...you'd have to wait for their "tuk tuk" or shuttle bus to take you to each attraction. Once you arrive at the gates, you insert your room key into the machine at the turnstile thingy and your picture appears on their screen. (We were wondering why they borrowed our passports!) There's no cheating here! It's easy though as there are no additional costs to go on rides, play arcade games, enter the aquarium etc. - it's all included in your room rates :)

What was also included was all of our meals. Seeing that you're in a VERY remote destination, you have to eat at this hotel! Breakfast, lunch and dinner was AYCE...sigh...there's no way of describing the experience but to mention that we are running low on tums :( Food was fab as expected - lots of Vietnamese, Asian and international cuisines to suit everybody's preferences!


The package we found for this hotel also included 2 foot massages, private fine dining experience at the beachfront restaurant and a photography tour around the resort. Wish we stayed here for an extra day - we had no idea the extent of how big this place really was and didn't have that much time to enjoy everything!

Upon our 5am departure (via the speedboat this time), they gave us two breakfast boxes so we wouldn't starve and presented us with a farewell gift! We totally thought they would just show us the digital proofs from the photo tour we did, but they actually printed them up, placed them in a really nice album and gave us a CD of all the shots. We love this place! Definitely two thumbs up and would recommend it to anybody visiting Nha Trang. (Don't worry, they didn't pay us to say that!)