This week I have an interview with my friend Caroline Mills. She’s an ex–Travelfish writer and now runs a small resort an hour south of Hoi An in Vietnam.
You can reach Caroline on Twitter at @misscvietnam, by email at contact@ledomainetamhai.com or the resort’s Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/LD.Tamhairesort/.
The transcript of the interview is below—with some minor editing for clarity and removing rooster noises.
Blood pressure drops. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
Hi everyone, today I’ve got an interesting interview with an old friend of mine and an ex–Travelfish writer Caroline Mills. She’s currently the manager of Le Domaine Tam Hai, a small resort on a small island, about an hour south of Hoi An. She’s been running the place for a few years and she runs it with a merry gang who she calls “The Pirates”. It’s been an interesting experience and I thought it would be an interesting chat to have, about what it’s like running a resort in Vietnam, that little bit off the track.
Caroline spoke to me by phone from the resort. She was busy with the Pirates getting them to put away, I think it was an angle grinder, and we’ve got some relative quiet. You’ll have to excuse the roosters—they’re actually at my place, not hers.
Without any further ado, let’s go straight into the chat with Caroline.
Slow days by the river. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Caroline thank you very much for your time to have a bit of a chat about what it’s like running a resort in Vietnam. Before we get onto the nuts and bolts of what it’s like doing what you do, can you give me a little bit of a brief history. What brought you to Vietnam in the first place and how it was that you ended up on an island south of Hoi An?
Caroline
Ah OK, Long story short, we quit the UK, my husband and I quit the UK because the recession hit back in around about 2009/2010. We were both in the luxury service industry back there and so we just sold everything and bought one way tickets to KL. The whole plan was to travel and wait until things got better.
Six months into that, we ended up in Hoi An. I may have lost our travel card and it took about, I don’t know, about 8 weeks before we got a new one. We kind of got a little bit stuck there. In that time we made loads of friends, got offered work and we just thought we’d hang around for a bit. Ten years later, we’re still here.
For the island side of it, I found as Hoi An developed it became very touristy. It also became really Western, and for me it didn’t suit my thinking of living somewhere exotic and far from home. I first visited the island about eight years ago and fell in love with the whole traditional lifestyle. It felt like Vietnam. So when I got offered this job, I jumped at it, and fell more in love with the island. So that’s why I’m still here.
Everyday scenes. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
So the resort was already there?
Caroline
Yes. The resort opened about 15 years ago, and back then there were no main roads or anything to the island. So even from Hoi An it would take about four hours to get here. Now there are bridges and highways and things, so it’s an hour away. But yeah, the resort has been here for a long time.
Stuart
So, can you tell me a little bit about the resort like how big it is, how many rooms there are, that kind of thing?
Caroline
The land is huge, but there are only ten villas on the land and so it’s mainly a natural place. It has lots and lots of trees which caused us some problems this year with all the storms. So it’s a small resort on a really large peninsula on the island. Even once you’ve come from the mainland, you still have to go over bridges to get to us, or otherwise come by the river.
Cows are welcome. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
Your staffing there, are they all drawn from the local community? Or are you bringing people down from Hoi An and other centres in Vietnam? How does how does that work?
Caroline
Only islanders. When the resort first opened, it was considered a poor area, so there’s no attraction for people from Hoi An to travel and come and work here. For me it’s really important to be able to give employment to the islanders. This comes with a lot of complexities because the education here ends at 14, and the predominant work is in fishing. It’s quite interesting trying to train staff, but they’re all hard workers and they’re all amazing. So yeah, we employ locally.
Stuart
How many employees do you have?
Caroline
We have 25 and most of them predate me—I’ve been here three years. Most of them have been working for the resort, or going backwards and forwards between here and having babies, or taking time off, since the resort opened.
Step outside and into Vietnam. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
I often see you on Twitter talking about the Pirates. I think sometimes it’s a bit of a term of affection and other times a term of frustration. Why do you call them Pirates?
Caroline
When I started at the resort, there were many, many problems from before. The owner, always employed a Westerner as manager, as back then 50% of our market was international travellers. As there’s no English language skills on the island, having a Westerner would be a positive thing. But she employed badly, and basically there was a lot of fraud.
The managers had taught the Pirates how to be a little bit naughty with finances. So initially I called them Pirates because they were all thieving little buggers. But it is a fond term. I mean for them it was just what they’ve been taught. So we had to go through quite a lot. But yeah, they’re amazing. I love our staff, but they did come from bad bad training.
Stuart
Do you feel that you’ve learned a lot from them?
Caroline
Yes, I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned to um, to relax and just believe that things can happen when we’re given a deadline. You know, even if it feels impossible, we do achieve it. And that works with the way that I work as well. I’m quite relaxed about stuff until we have only two days to get it done, and it’s the same for them. So yeah, I’ve learned an awful lot from them.
When Vietnam closed, numbers dropped off. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
So you mentioned that you’ve got over 20 staff and they’re all from the island, is that correct?
Caroline
Yeah.
Stuart
So would you say that you’re supporting a large number of families through having this enterprise?
Caroline
I hope so. The island is very, very old fashioned. When you support one family, or looking at a household of about three or four generations, so by employing one in that household, you’re supporting the entire family in a tiny way.
I’ve changed things so that we only buy our market shopping and things, we do that all on the island. And I’m trying to do this for every single purchase we make—although that’s difficult—is from the island. So the support goes beyond the staff.
Stuart
So you’re casting a larger shadow across the island in a way.
Caroline
Yeah, well I hope so, I’m trying.
One of the many stars on Caroline’s Twitter feed, Fat Dave. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
You mentioned earlier that you’re the manager, rather than the owner. If I remember correctly, the owner is in Ho Chi Minh City. Would you prefer to be the owner, or do you enjoy managing it rather than owning it?
Caroline
I’d love to own it! I know it is a financial impossibility, but there are so many restrictions, and the owner is a city woman. She loves the island and but she still doesn’t understand it. She handed it over to me and said run it as an owner, just throw things by me. But, there are quite a lot of arguments we have, because she doesn’t understand the island, so it’s really difficult. Certainly if I owned this place, I would run things quite differently.
Stuart
You said a primary market is international travellers, but with Covid, international tourism has changed. I realise the resort is closed for different reasons at the moment, but are you trying to change the approach and cater to more of a domestic market?
Caroline
Absolutely. Always 50% of our market was domestic travellers and I really enjoy that market. They’re easy, they’re great fun and also, it suits the Pirates. It’s not a struggle for them to try to understand the different ways that international travellers holiday, and easier for communication.
As a knock on effect, having a larger domestic market means I don’t have to work quite as hard, which is appealing. So losing the international market isn’t something that I’m concerned about. I’m really happy and quite excited to be aiming for the domestic market for the next year, or however long it takes for the rest of the world to catch up with Vietnam.
Pick a shady spot, turn the phone off for a week. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
If you had to pick one distinguishing factor that differentiates an international guest from a local guest, what would it be?
Caroline
Spend.
Stuart
Spend?
Caroline
Yeah. Most of our domestic travellers are return or word of mouth guests. They know what they’re signing up for before they come here—and they’re really excited. They’ll come from the cities, and as our price point is four–star, so they know from that it’s not going to be the cheapest holiday they could have. They’re excited about experiencing the seafood, and excited about going on boat trips. It’s like going back to their childhood, when things were a lot more simple. They enjoy that, and so they spend a lot more on site than a western traveler would.
The Pirates at play. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
I remember you have tweeted quite a few times about some of the, what’s the word? more problematic? guests that you get, tending to be from the Hoi An expatriate community. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that they can be such a hassle?
Caroline
I think the same reason that I was uncomfortable living in Hoi An anymore. It became so Western that you don’t feel that you’re living in Vietnam. It arms you with all of that arrogance of you don’t have to make an effort to try to speak the language, everything comes easily.
There’s also this whole thing where Hoi An really promoted expat discounts and things. Therefore they feel entitled to that, and they feel that it should be a privilege for us for them to come and stay. So they don’t have any problems about being quite demanding for discounts to book.
They feel that their presence just being here is something that we should appreciate, because it will generate more business—which it never does. They’re also cheap, so they bring along all their own food and drink and things, then complain the entire time because it’s not Hoi An.
The carnage left behind by one of over a dozen storms that hit the island. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Stuart
I’ll come to the storm in a second, but before the storm, what would you say was your biggest challenge or surprise in getting into this?
Caroline
There is nothing, nothing as big as the storm. I mean, Covid I saw when it broke in Wuhan, and that was back at the beginning of the year. I was doing our financial forecasts, and that was when there were lots of things online about people dropping dead on the road. I knew, because we were on the border of China, that could potentially be a big problem for us.
So although Covid was a concern, in January I redid our entire financial planning to work around that. I offered to work for a year unpaid, working on how much money we had in the bank, and working on a year to make sure that we could keep the Pirates in employment and to keep everything going.
So Covid wasn’t really a big problem. And in the long run it didn’t turn into a big problem for Vietnam. They handled it incredibly well. But yes the biggest surprise was the unmentionable storm.
Stuart
So tell me about the storm.
Local villages on the island suffered terrible damage. Photo: Caroline Mills.
Caroline
It wasn’t just one storm, it was a series of, I think, about 14 or 15. So the floods came first and we were underwater at the resort because we’re at the lowest end of the island. So we were underwater at the resort for a couple of months. This didn’t help with the fact that we have so many trees, and it undermined all of the root systems. And then it was storm number nine which completely knocked us for six. That’s what we’re still recovering from now. Slowly.
After storm number nine we had storm number twelve which came from a different direction, so it was like Dominos. It was just that I was hoping we could open for Christmas. A lot of our Vietnamese guests celebrate Christmas because they get a little bit of holiday for New Year’s Day. They’re curious about the whole Christmas thing, so it’s a good market for us.
I was hoping if we hadn’t had the storms that we could take up a little bit of business, to
