It is not often the winner of the “best personal assistant” prize in an Auckland firm gets to spend a few days in paradise.

And that is exactly what has happened with Angela Leng, who scooped the award as part of her job working for New Zealand company Bayleys Real Estate in Auckland.

Angela Rudling, a real estate sales and marketing representative, told Dear Tourist that she is in Samoa with her personal assistant (PA), who is also called Angela. 

“I work in a real estate called Bayleys Real Estate in Auckland, New Zealand and Angela is my personal assistant. And what happened is she won the personal assistant prize for being best assistant – so this was my reward for her, to bring her away and have a few days in paradise,” she said.

When she was asked what makes Samoa paradise for her, she said: “Without a doubt, Samoa is paradise. It’s beautiful, it’s lush, its beautiful beaches, beautiful people – we love it. Its clean and pretty and the weather is gorgeous.”

Besides sunbathing at the Taumeasina Island Resort poolside, driving around the island, going to Tafatafa and visiting Sinalei Resort were also highlights. 

“Sinalei resort was beautiful. They just had a storm there but it was absolutely beautiful, sitting there in the afternoon with drinks and met a lovely guy who works for the new Samoan airline and he was waiting on us so we had a really lovely experience. It was so beautiful,” said Angela.

Last Friday night, they dined at Paddles and got to witness the restaurant winning an award at the 2018 Samoa Tourism Excellence Awards. 

“We were at dinner last night and they had won the award last night and it was so exciting – they were so thrilled to have won that award.”

“And their Italian owner was so thrilled to win again. The food was fantastic, the food was great, I mean you can see why they won the award,” she told Dear Tourist.

While their Samoan adventure had been great, they noticed the absence of street signs when they tried to locate their friends.

 “I spent 45 minutes driving around in our rental car, trying to find where my friends lived when we arrived.” 

“We found one street sign in about 20 streets and even the GPS doesn’t seem to have names so it was really hard.”

“But we eventually found it, we ran into a woman that knew where we wanted to go and sort of gave us directions,” Angela said. 

She concluded the interview by saying she will without a doubt recommend Samoa to her friend as it is beautiful and vowed to be return. The pair flew in last Thursday and returned to Auckland last night.