Quan Lan: Robbers

(PICTURE: Huyen standing in the doorway of our ATI beach bungalow.)

Before we went to Quan Lan, I read a review of ATI Resort from a foreigner who wrote about having all of his possessions stolen and the authorities/resort doing nothing to help him. Well, Huyen and I were booked to stay at this resort on our last night so I was extra paranoid about someone stealing our stuff and especially the ring! All day and night I carried a backpack with anything of value; there was no way I was gonna be robbed on the first night I met Huyen and then again on our engagement night!

After a long day at the beach and a celebratory dinner, Huyen and I went back to our bungalow around 8:30 PM. It was already pitch black near our place but we were able to see a man approaching us with a flashlight. The man, who was probably in his sixties, turned out to be a security guard. The guard walked from bungalow to bungalow checking up on things. I wish I had some pictures of the whole resort complex but I don't. Basically from the two farthest bungalows to each other was probably 150 meters. It was a long distance for one security guard to cover by himself. On top of that, the resort wasn't fenced in. Actually, during the day a bunch of locals and tourists strolled up around the bungalows while we were hanging out on the beach. In fact, a group of eight tourists hung out on our porch because they thought nobody was staying there. The point is, security wasn't so tight.

Well, sure enough, at 11PM Huyen woke me up because there was a lot of commotion outside. A whole bunch of Vietnamese tourists in the bungalow next to ours were looking for the security guard. Turns out someone robbed their bungalow and took off with all their stuff (which I'm assuming includes the very expensive cameras that they were taking photos with on the beach during the day).

In case I'm not doing a good job in helping you put two and two together -- this resort is clearly cased out by the locals and robbed on a regular basis. This was the cherry on top for why I will never go back to Quan Lan.