Originally Posted by JohnRain

This is a clear sign of outstanding service: the staff cares so much about you that they're worried about your health and want you to stop smoking...

Originally Posted by John Parche

until 1979. From there I went to Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands for seven-and-a-half years operating an upmarket health retreat where my wife Lyn and I met the founder of Aman Resorts, Adrian Zecha through our mutual friend Ted Wright of The Regent Sydney.
In January 1987, Lyn and I joined Adrian as the first Aman employees. We sat in his Hong Kong office and discussed how and where the first Aman Resort would be. Adrian owned a two million acre property in the NT and it was planned to establish a typical Australian outback experience on Elsey Station south of Katherine. Regrettably, problems arose with the local indigenous people about stock routes, burial sites and a reaction to building a luxury resort on the banks of the Roper River. After many months of negotiating and drawing a blank, Adrian walked away and sold the property to the Aboriginal Development Council. Shortly after, Amanpuri in Phuket Thailand opened. It was a great loss for Australian tourism.
While working on The Elsey Station project in The Northern Territory and staying as a long-time resident at the Beaufort Hotel in Darwin, Adrian purchased the hotel after the Malaysian owners went into receivership. My career path suddenly changed and I ended up being GM of the 195-room hotel. Four years later, I transferred to Brisbane to operate The Heritage, then to The Sukhothai in Bangkok, before returning to Australia to rejoin Aman Resorts to establish more properties in Australia and the South Pacific. After visiting sites in the South Pacific, including New Zealand, it was considered all too difficult