For the family of an anaesthetist · Mum, let's do this · Dad, let's do this
The anaesthetist's work trip, seen from your side of the table: the whole family over one reef, pointing at the same clownfish — on a Tuesday, at two.
The CPD hours have to be logged anyway, this year, every year. Here they're logged before lunch, five days running, twenty metres from the beach. What's different is everything else: the boat at nine with the kids, the giraffe on Thursday, drums at six, one evening that's just the two of you, and a villa with its own pool. Probably the first conference your kids will ask to go back to.
Hi!
I'm Keilah. My partner is an anaesthetist, and I've done the tagging along. Chris wrote the other letter; the half of this week that starts at lunch is the half I made sure got built. That's as much about me as this page needs. The rest of it is about your week.
Keilah · co-founder, CPDHero.com
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THE WEEK, FROM YOUR SIDE OF THE TABLE
Their hours · 08:00 to 12:30, five mornings. One hour after dinner most nights; three evenings run later.
Yours · From lunch, every day. All of Saturday.
Children · A giraffe eating out of their hand. A clownfish they found themselves. Ice cream on the boat, a first go on a paddleboard, and a pool outside the door.
Teenagers · A week of their own: the trek, the water park, the dive centre, a door between two suites.
Where you sleep · Four of you won't fit in a suite — so it's a villa with its own pool.
Getting there · Flights are yours to book. The car at the other end is ours, and it's waiting.
School · Term starts on the 27th or 28th in the eastern states. Home with days in hand.
This retreat is confirmed. Venue contracted, faculty booked, dates locked. No minimum numbers. This is the companion page to the anaesthetist's page. Same week, other chair.
Regent Phu Quoc · Vietnam · 17–23 January 2027
“Tag along,” they said.
You know the shape of that day. The sessions run till five. Dinner is sponsored, and you're not at it. The kids have been in the room since three with the curtains half drawn.
Here the sessions end at half past twelve. Five days running, on the printed programme. In at eight, out at lunchtime. After lunch the whole family is in the water together. There's no city to wait out. The beach is across the anaesthetist's room.
Ink for the professional week.
pencil for the family's.
A family holiday is pencilled in, and one phone call from a surgeon rubs it out. A conference doesn't get rubbed out, because a conference is compulsory. So this week is the compulsory one. A surgeon's diary doesn't cancel it. Which means, for once, you get to do the thing a doctor's family rarely gets to do with a holiday: write it in the diary in ink, book the flights in September, and tell the kids yes — without a "probably".
The boat at nine
Whoever plans the holiday works the holiday, and in a doctor's house that's usually you. Not this one. The resort prints its week, the programme fixes theirs, and the first thing on yours is a boat.
It leaves the jetty at nine — the resort's own — for a morning along the coast: children from four, drinks and ice cream on board, back at one, just as the room lets out. If a boat isn't the morning, the beach hut is open from nine: kayaks, paddleboards, a sailing dinghy, snorkels, all free, and a paddleboard lesson on the morning programme. A six-year-old's first go on a paddleboard is a whole morning by itself. The water is Long Beach — a family from Brisbane who came with a six-year-old called it "so calm and warm and crystal clear" — and the pool has won awards, which your kids will not care about.
And if a morning at the kids' club is what your seven-year-old actually wants — pirate treasure hunted across the garden, a conical hat painted, the koi fed — it's there, twenty metres from the room the anaesthetist is in, ages four to twelve, no charge, and it runs straight through lunch so the handover lands after the anaesthetist's, not before it. It's an option. The plan is whatever your family does with a morning on a beach.
The resort's boat. Out at nine, back at one, children from four.
The option, not the plan. Twenty metres from the room.
The same reef, the same clownfish
Tuesday, ten past one. A boat built for children: a guide kneeling in the shallows fitting a mask to an eight-year-old, taking as long as it takes, then the one sighting the operators call almost guaranteed — clownfish in the anemones, the whole family over the same reef, pointing at the same fish. The anaesthetist has done four hours' work before lunch and is in the water with you by two. Home by six. Wet hair at dinner, and by the third night the shoes have stopped coming to dinner too.
The one the operators call almost guaranteed.
The whole family on one deck at sunset
Wednesday, half past three. The resort's boat goes out again, with everyone aboard this time. The kids have the paddleboards and the ice cream, someone puts a glass in the anaesthetist's hand, and the sun goes into the Gulf of Thailand with the whole family on one deck. Back after dark. There's sand in the folder by now.
Half past three, everyone aboard.
The giraffe
Thursday, while the anaesthetist is measuring the anaesthetist's own practice against a guideline, your child is in a buggy with a giraffe eating out of their hand. The safari park is an hour north — a drive-through, so the humans are the ones in the cage, and some of the animals came from Australia — and the water park is next door, so a six-year-old and a thirteen-year-old sort the day out between them.
Back by four. Or the farms in the north: a pepper farm where the farmer hands you a drink made from the crop you're standing in, and a bee farm where you put on the veil.
Thursday. An hour north, back by four.
Any afternoon
The cable car goes out over open sea for nearly eight kilometres in one go, and lands you at a water park on the far side. There's a half-past-three session on the resort's programme: twenty-five minutes' drive, back for dinner. Or your own pool, ten steps from the bed, and the kids are in it before anyone has found their sunglasses. Or beach games at four with a ten-year-old, which is unglamorous and therefore true.
Four pools on the property: one with a children's pool, one on the beach, two on the roof and one of those adults only. Each person in your family gets water that's theirs.
Or the kids' cooking class: chef's hats, a cupcake decorated past all recognition, and a house rule that it needs two children to run — so your eight-year-old and another anaesthetist's end up in one kitchen, and the two families end up at one table that night. That's roughly how the week makes its friends.
Nearly eight kilometres over the water. Back for dinner.
The pool that has won awards. Your kids will not care why.
Drums at six
Home at six, flat by seven, asleep on the couch by eight — that's the doctor most weeks hand you, and a nicer hotel doesn't change it.
Here, six o'clock is drums by the family pool: the one moment of the day when the whole household is in the same place, back from wherever it went, still sandy, dinner not yet started. Dinner at Rice Market — family-style, the restaurant Travel+Leisure called one worth flying for. Then the anaesthetist's hour: one, after dinner, over a drink with the people from the room, about the time the youngest goes down. Then back. Three evenings run later — the Monday rooftop, the Thursday table on the sand, the Friday goodbye — and I'd let them have those. The other nights are yours.
Rice Market. Family-style, and open from half past six in the morning.
One evening that's just the two of you
A babysitter for the evening can be arranged. The tenth floor has an adults-only infinity pool, there's a bar built to look like the golden age of train travel, and the next thing on anyone's programme is eight the following morning — which is the anaesthetist's problem, not yours.
After the youngest is down.
Buried to the neck in warm sand
Conference programmes don't usually have a line for you. This one does. The spa runs a bed of warm quartz sand you're buried in up to the neck — a novelty, and I'm claiming nothing more for it than that, except that when Chris read about it his reply was "sign me up." There's a medical pedicure studio built on a French podiatrist's method, toes to knees, thirty-five minutes, which the resort says is ideal for heavy legs after long flights. And there are two treatments for children, with a parent in the room — a they-thought-of-everything detail I keep coming back to.
The quartz sand bed. Chris's reply: 'sign me up.'
Toes to knees, thirty-five minutes.
The teenager gets a week, not a kids' club
A thirteen-year-old is too old for the little kids' morning, and I'd rather say that than write "looked after" about a teenager. Their week: the forest trek at eight on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — steep wooden ladders, and the resort's own warning that it will be hard; the water park; the dive centre for the certified and the curious; Vovinam on the beach on a Wednesday; the paddleboards from nine; and the right to be unimpressed at dinner. With teenagers, ask a different room question too. A family of four with two older teenagers, working it out on a travel forum last year, ended up choosing between one two-bedroom villa and two suites that connect — and the guest who'd seen both recommended the suites. A door between the rooms is worth more than a pool at fifteen.
The beach hut, from nine. Boards, kayaks, a dinghy, snorkels.
Where you sleep
"Family welcome" at a conference has usually meant a second bed. Here it means the room decides the category, not the budget: the suites take two adults and one small child — a fire-and-licensing limit, common across the region — so a family of four isn't in a hotel room. It's in a villa with a kitchen, a terrace and its own pool, and the kids are in it before the bags are open. Two of you: a suite with a daybed on the balcony facing the sunset, or a villa with an infinity pool. Two or three families together: three- and four-bedroom villas, several pools, one address, and the resort's boat on the Saturday for twelve.
Whichever door: breakfast for up to two adults per bedroom, so a partner in the same room often adds nothing to the rate. Three pieces of laundry and three of pressing per bedroom, every day — for a family of five, one suitcase instead of three. Infants free; children priced as children until twelve; the next page prints what happens at twelve. Two budgets, one trip: the registration, and the room you'd have booked somewhere in January anyway. Our rate holds across every room category until each one sells out — and January is the island's busiest month.
Four of you, one pool, no shared wall.
Two of you. The infinity pool faces the sunset.
Saturday, and the days either side
The programme ends on Friday, the rate runs three days either side, and a surprising amount of the island only works the day after. Golf at six, caddie and buggy in the round. The resort's boat for the whole day — twelve people, three families or one family and the colleagues the anaesthetist talked into coming, lobster cooked on deck while the kids swim off the back. The cable car across to the water park and back for the night market, the water show at half past seven, and a musical about defending Phu Quoc from an alien invasion that ends in seven minutes of fireworks, which is a plot I couldn't improve on. Dinner at the Robb Report restaurant in the same building where the anaesthetist spent the week talking about hip blocks, with no session the next morning.
A retreat that ends on a Friday and puts everyone on a plane the same afternoon is a course. One that ends with a Saturday is a holiday that contained a course. Stay the extra nights at the same rate — a seventh, or a fortnight. Term starts on the 27th or 28th of January in the eastern states, a few days later in the west and Tasmania, and between the 28th and the 3rd in New Zealand. You're home with days in hand.
Saturday dinner. No session the next morning.
Getting there
Flights aren't part of the registration — the offer page has the details. Phu Quoc connects through Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, and we send the visa note long before you need it. Then it's ours: a driver waiting when you clear the terminal, a car for five and a pram, child seats if you've asked, twenty minutes to the resort. If you've just flown with three children, that's the hour of the trip you were dreading, and it's gone. The car that brought you in is the last vehicle you need until it takes you back — the teaching room, the pools, the beach, the restaurants and your bed are on one piece of ground.
One piece of ground. The car from the airport is the last vehicle you need.
Said plainly
We haven't been. This is the first retreat, and it will be my first time in Vietnam — so there's no photograph of last year's family at the long table, and I'm not going to borrow one. Everything on this page is on a timetable you can read or in a review you can check: the Regent sits at 4.9 across a thousand-odd reviews, Travel+Leisure's readers voted it the number one resort in Southeast Asia, and I'd read the reviews from families — and the resort's own gallery — before deciding anything. The sessions are the anaesthetists'. Evening times may move by an hour. And the line on the front of the brochure is true: This retreat is confirmed. Venue contracted, faculty booked, dates locked. No minimum numbers. It runs whether the room is full or not.
If the anaesthetist is coming alone
That's normal, and many will. The room is the point. This page still tells you what the week is — and somewhere on the second afternoon the anaesthetist will realise nobody needs an anaesthetist until eight tomorrow. You'll hear about it.
If it's just the two of you
Then the week is yours from lunch, and none of the above needs a child to work. The sand bed and the pedicure. The adults-only pool on the roof, and the bar built to look like a train carriage. Golf at six with a caddie, the dive centre, the trek with the wooden ladders, the pepper farm in the north. The sunset boat on Wednesday, with a glass in your hand instead of a paddleboard. Oku on the Saturday. And the one thing a partner doesn't usually get out of a conference: the anaesthetist across the table at lunch, every day, with nowhere to be until eight.
What to do with this
An anaesthetist's partner once wrote, for anaesthetists to read, that a day with the family should be locked in like an appointment with the accountant — please plan for it. This is that day, five times over, held in place by the one entry in the diary that doesn't get bumped.
So: ask which villa is free for your dates, at the rate we hold. The next page has the rooms, the children's rates and the two-step booking — the seat with us, the room direct with the resort. It costs nothing to ask, and it's the question that tells you whether this is your January.
Then send the anaesthetist their letter, if it hasn't been read yet. Or skip that: show the kids the boat and the giraffe, and let them make the case at dinner. It tends to be a better case than mine.
February 2027
The half of the anaesthetist's year that needed a room, done before the kids are back at school. A week the kids describe to their teacher in more detail than you'd like. And in March, somewhere across a drape, a colleague asks how Phu Quoc was and gets "fine" — which, Chris tells me, is the highest praise this profession has. What won't get said is that the family booked it.
— Keilah
P.S. This retreat is confirmed. Venue contracted, faculty booked, dates locked. No minimum numbers. Registrations close when the forty are taken. Our rate holds until each room category sells out.
P.P.S. CPD for them. Paradise for you. Everybody wins — including the two in the back seat: Mum, let's do this. Dad, let's do this.
Not deciding today? Take the programme outline with you (PDF).