InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort Da Nang where Donald Trump Is Staying in Vietnam
President Donald Trump is making his first official visit to Asia this week with stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The 11-day journey will mark the longest stay in Asia for any president in the last 25 years.
Along the way, Trump will stop to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam, where he will take part in the Economic Leaders’ Meeting alongside alongside other world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping at the five-star InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for us to host such an important and significant event at the resort,” Juan Losada, GM of InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, told Conference and Meeting World. “For months, our team has been working hard under the instructions and guidance of the APEC Committee, Danang’s Government and Sungroup management team to make sure everything is perfect.”
While we are sure there will be plenty of hard work and tough discussions at the meeting, there will also be some inevitable monkey business thanks to the resort’s peculiar features.
You see, the InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort is well known not only for its luxurious amenities but also for its unique decor — including monkey heads mounted on the walls, monkey sculptures, monkey paintings in every room, a banana-themed movie theater, a monkey-themed nightclub called Cheeky Monkey, and even real monkeys swinging from the trees outside the hotel’s windows. And it’s those monkeys, the staff says, that are the real stars of the show.
“These forests are full of monkeys,” Bill Bensley, the U.S.-born resort architect, told Travel + Leisure. “They’re docile, elegant, beautiful animals and they almost never come down from the trees.”
Indeed, all the decor and the hotel itself is an homage to Bensley’s favorite local primate, the douc langur.
“During construction we had to enforce very strict rules for the construction guys not to touch the monkeys, because they’re endangered, but also the natural food for some people in the area,” Bensley said.
The doucs are currently listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. In total there are fewer than 300 left in the wild. And what makes them so unique, according to Van Hong Hia, a researcher with the Douc Langur Foundation, is just how peaceful these monkeys really are.
“We haven’t recorded any cases of them fighting, even when different families stay and eat at the same place,” he told T+L. “They are so different to other monkeys.”
And as Bensley added, the hotel is more than happy to host anyone, including world dignitaries, as long as they understand that “we are the guests here” in the home of one of the world’s most beautiful, docile, quiet, and endangered species.
Perhaps the world leaders will learn a thing or two from these primates and bring that peace, love, and silent energy to the world stage.
travelandleisure.com
