A group of three hotels spread between Tanzania, Vietnam and Spain does not explain itself well with a map. The three points sit so far apart that the first reading is the easy one: that they simply happened, one after another, with no criterion beyond opportunity.
The second reading asks you to look closer. Not at the countries: at the beaches.
The beach next door
Paje sits on the east coast of Unguja, the side the big circuits drive past. Hà My occupies one of the least built-up stretches running from Hội An up towards Da Nang, with the old town twelve minutes away by car. And Playa Blanca is on the southern tip of Lanzarote, beside the coves of Papagayo, at the end that catches least of the northern wind.
Put like that they are three postal addresses. Set side by side, they are the same decision taken three times: none of the three is the postcard beach, and all three are next door to one.
To be near what everyone comes to see, and not to be inside it.
What that changes on arrival
It changes two things, and both show on the first day. The first is the noise: the coach does not reach the beach next door, so the morning sounds like whatever the place sounds like. The second is that the famous thing is still right there, a short ride away — an old town on the World Heritage list, a city of carved doors, a landscape of lava with vineyards inside the craters.
It is a position that is hard to find and easy to lose: these are the stretches that get built up last, and that is exactly why they do not last. Choosing them three times running is not chance, and it is the closest thing this group has to a thesis.
What doesn't go into the decision
Climate does not, for a simple reason: the sun on an island is the same on all its beaches, so it separates none of them from the rest. Nor does market size, which would advise precisely the opposite — going where the people already go.
What does go in is how the light falls through the windows and whether the land has something to say. It sounds like brochure language until you compare it with the alternative, which is choosing from a table.
The three destinations are told one by one on this same site, with their tides, their spices and their lava. And the three hotels, on theirs.
