Vana Belle, a Luxury Collection Resort, Koh Samui Review

Chaweng Noi is the smaller bay just south of Chaweng, and Vana Belle has 180 metres of it at the foot of its garden. The sand is soft and pale, the cabanas and loungers sit in the shade of the trees, and granite rocks close off one end of the resort's stretch, so it feels like a beach of its own rather than a section of a longer one. The coconuts brought down to the loungers come carved with the resort's name. What makes it is the water. You walk in off the sand and swim, and the bay was clear enough to see the bottom. Of everything at Vana Belle, the sea is the prize. On Samui a sea like this is less common than it sounds. At Kamalaya, where we went next, the beach is a shallow, tidal lagoon, the one weak point of an exceptional retreat. SALA's stretch of Chaweng was fine, on the island's busiest beach. Garrya Tongsai Bay has the more private cove, with no engines on the water. For the swimming itself, Chaweng Noi is the one we would go back for.

Every room at Vana Belle has a private pool, so the choice of room is a choice of view. Ours faced the open sea, and the view was magnificent: the plunge pool on the terrace, the shingled roofs of the villas below, and the Gulf of Thailand filling the rest of the glass. The bay faces east, so the sun rises in front of the terrace, and the bed is turned towards it. That outlook is the reason to book the Premium Ocean Pool Suite. The resort opened in 2013, and our suite showed it in places: some of the finishes had worn. It did not take the edge off the stay. You notice the view long before the finishes. The welcome had been prepared for us by name: a letter from the guest experience team waiting in the suite, and beside the fruit, kalamae, the traditional Thai sweet, with a card explaining it. Staff knew our names from then on, and the service never slipped from that standard.

The resort is built down a forested slope, and you arrive at the top, in an open-air lobby whose tall timber arch frames the garden and the sea below. The buildings are kept low, with steep shingled roofs, dark timber and dense planting between them. There are no lifts anywhere on the property, which suits the hillside and means stairs between levels; buggies run between the lobby, the suites and the beach. Directly behind the sand is the main pool, an infinity-edge freshwater pool with loungers on a wooden deck and more set into the shallow end, three cabanas and the thatched Pool Bar a few steps away. It is the other half of a beach day, and we moved between the two. We also used the gym, open around the clock. Vana Spa has four double treatment rooms named after heroines of Thai mythology, with Thalgo treatments and a two-hour Siam Boran ritual. Breakfast is at Kiree, on a covered terrace that looks inland over the jungle to the hills, and it set the day up well. We had our dinners out on the island. At night Kiree serves an Italian menu, Panali on the beach is a casual Thai restaurant, and the resort will set a private table at Secret Pond, among the rocks. The places we went out for are in my Koh Samui guide for The Luxury Editor.

Vana Belle is not the newest resort on Koh Samui, and some of its suites show their decade. What it has is harder to build: a quiet bay with a sandy sea you can swim in, a private pool with every room, and staff who learn your name. Nearly everything we would say about it comes back to the beach. If the sea is why you are going to Samui, this is where we would put you, and it pairs well with a stay at Kamalaya, as it did for us.