I would love for us to take the credit for finding this little spot of paradise, but it was thanks to Katherine and Pieter de Kretser who stayed here in 2017 that we decided to come stay at Haven.

Getting there from HCMC was a real adventure. For starters, it was pouring with rain when we left the hotel. Then we had a mini disaster when I left our bag with passports / credit cards / phone in the taxi – resolved very easily thanks to us using the really user-friendly Uber style app for south-east Asia, Grab. This meant that we were able to call our driver to come back before he even realised that we had left the bag on the back seat!! Phew.

From then on everything was great, despite a bit of a risk: a night train ride. We booked a 4-bed cabin on a train leaving at 9.55pm, due to pull into Diêu Tri at 8.30am the following morning. Our cabin was as spacious as you could expect, with clean linen and even a vase of artificial flowers! One game of uno later we were in our bunks watching the scenery wizz by and sleep came quickly.

We even had to set an alarm!! We did arrive an hour or so late and stopped quite frequently during the night (which only seemed to wake me up!) and it was very cold on the top bunk taken by Tom and I, but in general it was a great experience.

A taxi ride later north through Qui Nhon and we were dropped at the top of the village. After a tricky walk through the hustle and bustle of a seaside community in full action mode with all our suitcases, including having to navigate around a churning cement mixer, we were greeted by the beach view which was going to be ours for the next week.

Haven is attached to the Big Tree Bistro, a beachside garden restaurant. We had the first floor room with a balcony – and could eat and drink to our hearts content just downstairs. MoJo were particularly keen on the wood fire pizza oven (even helping make their pizzas on our last night!), the food was a good mix of Vietnamese and western dishes.

The owners tell us they are about to undertake a refurb, needed but hope it doesn’t lose some of its easy going charm.

Molly and Joanna had fun making some new friends, playing on the beach and sketching and snacking outside.

We spent a couple of evenings next door at Life’s a Beach tempted by the sharing Vietnamese dinner one night and a quiz another (in which we proudly came 3rd!!).

One afternoon we hired a boat and went on a snorkelling trip to the nearby islands, where a highlight was plucking and eating sea urchins and slightly feeble efforts at paddling a circular bamboo boat.

Thanks to our great captain Hung who taught us a few things!

We made the most of having the beach in our doorstep, doing a beach clean up the first day and beach olympics / sports day another afternoon. Of course epic sandcastles were made (including a pizza oven!) and runs done on the coastal road overlooking other bays.

For our last night we decided to try out the beach food stalls, selecting various live crab and sea grape seaweed which was delicious at the time but did come back to haunt Tom and I later.