Well – six of seven days later into our 2014 vacation at the Santhiya @ koh Phangan, I’ve got decidedly mixed feelings about the place! Some parts of it were indeed as advertised, while others weren’t – and to top it off, we had a few unexpected mishaps.
Some brief facts about our stay first: we stayed at the Hideaway Pool Villa for a seven day stay, opting for also the private speedboat transfer. Total damage was about TBH58K, or about SGD2,351. Not exactly cheap for resort-centered stays, more so that this resort isn’t situated in an overpriced everywhere Singapore.
Firstly; the good things.
The villa sits on a pretty secluded north-easterly spot on the island, and has its own private beach that’s marked out by inaccessible rocks on one end, and by more rocks on the other end. Not easily accessible from the rest of the island too (more on that later). The villa we stayed in was also reasonably private. While the villas themselves are not spaced that far apart, foliage and trees are cleverly used to isolate one unit from the next. Our villa also sat near the top of one steep incline, which meant that we could occasionally hear vehicles that were trying to get up-hill. Not loud enough to be of a bother at all, but it’s there if you’re the type to notice these things.
The resort spans a very large 18 acres spot, and uses the space to maximum advantage with beautifully landscaped features all around. The beach, main restaurant and main pool sit on the lower end of the resort, while the other restaurant and pool are situated at the upper end. The villas and units are served by buggies which serve guests round the clock for those who don’t want to manage the climb. The resort is also reasonably new, opening its doors in July 2006. There are 60 villas in the Resort, and two other accommodation buildings housing maybe another dozen or so units. All in, it’s a fairly large resort with very few units.
Our villa, like the others in the resort, had golden teak wood with intricately carved wood as a central theme. We like the general architecture of the unit, though our specific unit configuration wasn’t what we’d initially expected. Specifically, some of the villa units feature outdoor shower areas. I did inquire during our back/forth correspondence about outdoor bugs that might invade the shower areas (wouldn’t want Hannah freaking out in the middle of the night!), but the resort assumed I was requesting the units with the indoor shower type, and allocated one such. That did mean that we had somewhat less common space after the children’s bedding was put in, but hindsight, it worked as well – since the cloudy weather and occasional rain brought out a host of insect inhabitants to run around in the outdoor areas!
Our villa’s pool – one of our eagerly anticipated highlight – didn’t disappoint. It was as large as it looked from the pictures, reasonably well-maintained, and also deep enough at the deepest end for swimming. Make no mistake though; you won’t be swimming length-wise laps in this pool, but it’s somewhat wide enough for you to swim circles around it at least. The kids certainly loved the pool. We spent several afternoons lazing on our pool’s deck chairs; with Peter napping in his cot, Hannah scampering around anything that caught her current attention, and Ling reading a borrowed library book about life in North Korea (duh – yep!).
The resort never felt crowded, and the over the week we were there, guests were mostly Caucasians (especially Germans), and we encountered just one other local Singaporean family. Yep; no other Asians, and certainly and thankfully no misbehaving or rowdy North-Asian tourists!
The staff were as a rule, friendly and hospitable – well, at least apart from one buggy driver who did not smile, did not greet, and instead gave us a cold hard look whenever we boarded his vehicle to/fro the common areas and our villa. Other than that, we found the staff accommodating and attentive, and possibly even over-staffed during meal times that we never needed to call long for attention. Oddly though while the staff were hospitable, we observed that they didn’t as a rule make attempts at polite conversation to most guests. The smiles were genuine, but unlike some of the other five-star establishments we’ve stayed, the staff didn’t attempt to engage most guests beyond greetings. Housekeeping was brisk and spot-on too for the most part, excepting one evening late in our stay when they missed their housekeeping service. We observed a team of four (two chambermaids and two pool boys to scoop leaves out of the pool, and clean the general surroundings), and we had four bottles of water brought to our villa twice.
Breakfast was a mix of Asian and Western cuisine types. The fare was generally savory, though by the time we got to the midpoint of our stay, we were getting a little tired of more/less same spread each morning! The restaurant and adjourning areas was large enough to host a sizable number of guests, so we never felt like we were rushing for seats, nor did we feel compelled to finish up and go to make space for others (not that we ever chose to overstay our welcome). There was in-restaurant live local music each day too, which added more local flavor to the ambiance.
More in the next post – the not-so-good.
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