An island ‘pearl’ in the Gulf of Thailand rockets Vietnam to the top 10 list of global travel destinations for 2024. Vogue Living takes a tour of the new Regent Phu Quoc resort, a holiday village premised on traditional Vietnamese precedents and hyper-personalisation.

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The Regent Phu Quoc main pool. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

If heaven has a set of compass co-ordinates they surely cross on the palm-lined sands of Long Beach in Phú Quốc, the largest Vietnamese island, in the Gulf of Thailand, where the IHG group has launched a new Regent resort that plays to both meaningful regionalism and the modern traveller’s hyper-nuanced needs. No mean feat in an age and industry grappling with the balance between luxury and the sensitive incentivisation of local cultures.

The Regent Phu Quoc main pool. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

The Charming Deeps is an extraordinary hand-blown crystal sculpture by Czech glass-makers Lasvit that makes conceptual corridor statement on the mesmerising coral life found in surrounding seas. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc..

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

This is ‘retreat’ at its rebounding post-Covid best, buoyed by an ensemble of charming architectures connecting along honed stone streets dotted with ‘communal houses’ delivering next-level health and hospitality. Read: a day spa that makes perfumed marshmallows of knotted muscles and Michelin-grade chefs teasing palates across six venues lining alleyways alluding to the traditional Vietnamese village.

The Concierge Desk locates in a dramatic street of stone and timber, detailed by Blink Design with deference to regional Vietnamese architecture. It directs guest passage to Sky West Wing villas which enjoy panoramic views of The Gulf of Thailand. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Meticulously crafted details by the Blink Design Group speak of the region’s multi-layered historic influences within a paradise sprawl of landscaped gardens leading to a private beach where the water-sports mad can indulge in snorkelling, dinghy sailing, sea kayaking, windsurfing or stand-up paddle-boarding. I prefer the more passive catamaran charter, charged with French bubbles, booming yacht rock (or your desired strains) and canapes dished by crew straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. The vessel navigates coastline coloured by pastel houses with Mediterranean pretensions and tiny islands connected by the world’s longest non-stop, three-rope cable car running nearly eight kilometres (worth the ticket to get a bird’s eye view of fishing activities in the aquamarine idyll).

Endless pools and gourmet eateries arrange in a central service spine, catering to a village-like sprawl of luxury-appointed villas. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Such engineering feat (completed in 2018) reminds of the tireless government work to transform wider country into a place of peace and modern retreat post the 1970s War that ravaged Vietnam’s trade and tourism. The efforts have recently rewarded with Vietnam rating as the safest country in Asia to travel to in 2024 (according to the Global Law and Order index) and a ranking in the top 10 global travel destinations for 2024 (according to Tripadvisor).

The Lobby Lounge overlooks a tranquil lagoon. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Development continues apace across the region, with none of the charming parochialism or gentle personality being excised from the laid-back archipelago of Phú Quốc, nearly 50 per cent of which is protected as a Biosphere by UNESCO. Hikers note: the jungle-lush rain forests of Phú Quốc’s National Park offer pathways to cascading waterfalls and spectacular cave systems.

The Sky West Wing (background) affords panoramic views over The Gulf of Thailand. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

The Regent group has been mindful of Vietnam’s restorative drive, delivering on a hospitality ‘hamlet’ that feels as if ordered by the organic attrition of time—architecture alluding to traditional village structure and planning contriving for the chance encounter and decelerated step. The quickest journey through its compound, selectively flanked by ponds of koi fish and scented by mature frangipanis, peddles on a guest bicycle, or delivers in a golf cart when the occasional evening rain messes with the room-to-restaurant walk.

The Regent Phu Quoc’s Sky West Wing. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

My personally appointed ‘experience agent’ explained that families and friends can enjoy both privacy and party across the 385sqm two-level Two Bedroom Terrace Pool Villa, accommodating four adults and two children, or the 431sqm Three-Bedroom template housing six adults and three children.

The Sky Pool Villa Living Room. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

As one who has formerly suffered the family holiday in 40sqm ‘suites’ with boys almost two metres tall, 400sqm-plus not only saves a marriage, it casts the brood as a benign bunch of co-travellers whose beefs and bad habits suck into the vortex of endless dimension.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

But there’s more, informed my ‘experience assistant’ Rosa, who later guided tour through tamed jungle, concealing free-standing villas variously scaled and styled for the traveller wanting the facility and faint familiarity of home, but filtered with a hedonistic artfulness and floating above lily-pad lagoons.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Think bedroom wings accommodating 12, zoned around a tropical ‘moderne’ living spread that opens to an indulgent length of private infinity pool within a ‘floatie’ fling of the Long Beach foreshore. “You could easily do the family Christmas here,” noted Rosa, highlighting the separation between kitchen and living in the courtyard villa. “We can arrange for one of our resident chefs to come in and cook your choice of festive fare.” Yes please, Santa!

All freestanding villas are fully serviced and, though internally open to indigenously lush landscape, betray no hint of inner life from the outside—a boon for those who value privacy and beach proximity. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

“The building design draws inspiration from Vietnamese Gian Nha style architecture, where small-scale landscaped courtyard spaces reveal themselves and connect guests to the location,” explains Blink Design founder and creative partner, Clint Nagata of properties designed to open to the elements.

Hawaiian-born Clint Nagata, founder and creative partner of Blink Design. Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

“The quality of space is slowly revealed, creating surprise elements as the guest’s journey through the villa. Small pockets and courtyards transition through different experiences within one house. The flexibility of the design is enhanced by its convertible design, easily transforming from one villa into two separate suites while ensuring each retains outside space and a plunge or swimming pool.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

“All the interiors find their way to the outside, strengthening the indoor-outdoor experience of this resort. We want to remind guests of the peace that nature brings. We took every opportunity to extend spaces outside, enhancing the resorts calming and relaxing atmosphere.”

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

The Rice Market is a day to night venue housing Taste Galleries primed for the international span of gustatory likes. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

The option to formally dine-in is a plus, but if feeling a little more adventurous, the resort is home to some of the country’s (nay, Asia’s) best culinary options. The Rice Market, a relaxed all-day dining venue named for its division of provisions and farm-to-table produce, wraps around a tree-planted courtyard bound by traditionally latticed timber screens.

The Rice Market Bakery is a seven-day-a-week source of gourmet breads and the best-tasting baked goods for the gluten intolerant. All allergies can be catered for. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Their veiled promise of ‘something beyond’ streams into Taste Galleries trading in fare from local Lamian noodles to gut-biome building smoothies, and specialty kitchens where dietary requests bake into best-in-class gluten-free breads and muffins (which for this coeliac are almost worth repatriating for).

Oku Restaurant dishes a French Japanese fusion of flavours and textures turning local seafood and Australian Wagyu beef into a triumph of taste. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Oku restaurant is the peaceful, palatable détente to the debate over whether to eat French or Japanese. It is the gastronome’s go-to in a venue said to blend an Omekase Atelier with a Salon de Boeuf. Booths are available but I suggest booking a stool at the bar where you can watch a seamless choreography of master chefs making such fusion magic as a ‘quintet of artisanal cheeses in tempura’.

Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

The Ocean Club restaurant, focuses on innovative Mediterranean-inspired flavours, local seafood and seasonal produce with a breezy lightness of touch telling of the venue’s adjacency to the white sands of Long Beach.

In The Ocean Club restaurant, local produce colours into a King Crab Salad. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Bar Jade brews cocktails the colour of gemstones and takes guests on the conceptual retro train ride. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

Bar Jade hides in the heart of the Regent Phu Quoc complex, describing as a speakeasy-style parlour harking back to the golden age of luxury train travel. Cocktails colour and characterise around precious gems, their jewel-rich depths sparkling in the sultry dark of a denizen that could pass as a carriage on the 1930s Orient Express, minus the Agatha Christie murder.

The rooftop Fu Bar mixes a mean gin cocktail by a 50m-long infinity pool. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

The roof-top terrace Fu Bar, flanked by a 50-metre long infinity pool and focusing on gin cocktails, is the perfect place to swim, sip and let stress suck into a blood orange sunset.

The rooftop pool. Image credit: courtesy of Regent Phu Quoc.

If your booking co-incides with one of the Regent’s regular Taste Studios, then make sure to nab a seat at its interactive table—the base for a multi-sensory dining experience that delivers ‘taste’ as a collaborative confection of mind-blowing art, music, film, fashion and food. Moveable feast takes on new meaning in the hands of Oku chef de cuisine, Andy Huynh, Ocean Club chef de cuisine, Daniel Huynh, celebrity guest chef Hoang Tung, mixologist ‘mood therapist’ Richard McDonough, and AC3 Studio, a team of ‘creative technologists’, who turned the following Taste pop-up into a multi-media odyssey through Vietnamese folklore.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

The Spa is a ‘wellness’ centre with a luxury Christian Liagre vibe. Dark timbers, light-diffusing lanterns and silk wallpapers wrapping clients in a restorative warmth from first stone step over a zig-zag bridge into treatment rooms and massage studios where the sweet countenance of staff suddenly steels into the exorcism of your stress.

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.

Here relaxation roots in the three pillars of ‘high touch, high frequency and high energy’ across acoustic, vibrational and hot sand therapies. Bliss!

Image credit: Owen Raggett, courtesy of Blink Design.