Under This 5 Star Hotel’s Pool is a Vietnam Era Bomb Shelter for Celebs
It’s difficult to find five-star luxury experiences that include everything from a Michelin dining experience to a UNESCO heritage status wartime bunker. This is something you think you might be able to swing in Europe perhaps in some European village, but you can actually find it much closer to home in the Pacific. The Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi in the north of Vietnam is the perfect confluence of history, luxury, and leisure.
Nestled in the French Quarter of Hanoi, it recently marked its 125th anniversary, and in that time it has seen a lot. As part of its celebrations it curated a Michelin listed dining programme at its restaurant Le Beaulieu. It gained its Michelin Key last year in the guide’s inaugural edition in Vietnam. It looks like New Zealand isn’t the only place that has been waiting for Michelin to come around and recognise quality establishments. The hotel plays host to a range of gastronomic experiences. From the Paris-inspired La Terrasse, the airy all-day dining Le Club Bar or the bespoke bar-lounge-restaurant Angelina, there’s something for everyone.
Outside of its culinary delights the Hotel also played host to Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump during their bilateral talks in 2019.
While the others have their own accolades, perhaps the most interesting is the humble but popular poolside Bamboo Bar. During its renovations in 2011 the hotel’s engineering team re-discovered a wartime bunker complex underneath the hotel grounds. It served to protect hotel guests during the American War during the 60s and 70s. Locally they don’t call it the Vietnam War. The bunker served guests such as singer Joan Baez and actress Jane Fonda. It’s not exactly up to the same standards as the other 358 rooms the hotel offers in its historic Heritage Wing and newer Opera Wing but their preservation efforts have earned them a UNESCO Award for Cultural Heritage. Guests of the hotel are able to enter the shelters once a day alongside a helpful guide.
This year it was listed on several of the world’s Best Hotel lists, and it’s easy to see why. From its palatial swimming pool to its distinctive 1920s French and colonial Indochine interior decor, everything says care and luxury. Three suites are specially set apart based on their previous occupants. One for Graham Greene who stayed in 1951. He’s the author of The Quiet American and the suite is located on the second floor of the Heritage Wing. It’s a good book by the way, critical of America’s involvement in Vietnam, and prescient of the outcomes of the war that would follow, and still relevant to American foreign policy today. Or if you don’t have time the movie starring Michael Caine will do just fine. A floor up is the Charlie Chaplin Suite where the actor honeymooned in 1936. Another writer gets an honourable status at the hotel on the first floor of the Heritage Wing with the Somerset Maugham Suite. The novelist and playwright stayed in 1923 and wrote part of The Gentleman in the Parlour there. The book is a piece of non-fiction covering his trip from Burma to Haiphong, Vietnam, via horseback over mountains and then by boat over the sea.
Make it your mission to do something so great the next suite is named after you. But perhaps do it in the new Neo-classic wing where the new star power should be congregating.
