Aleenta Hua Hin

Barefoot-chic spa hotel on a secret golden beach, 3 hours south of Bangkok

After a few days in Bangkok, chances are you’ll want to head to the coast for some S&S on the beach (R&R is so last year, don’t you know). But the question is, where’s the best place? Well, it depends what you think S&S stands for. If it’s sleaze and sex shows, then jump on a bus to Pattaya and begone with you. But if it’s sand and sea, swimming and sunbathing or spa and style, then you should head south, past the resorty sprawl and golf courses of Cha-Am and Hua Hin, to the little market town of Pranburi - a gloriously uncommercialised stretch, with a long empty beach, where Baht billionaires’ villas brush shoulders with palm trees and towers of lobster pots. At one end is Aleenta: it’s Sanskrit for ‘a rewarding life’ and it’s the original - and best - boutique resort here, its 2 stylish beachfront wings (one for families, one for grown-ups) separated by a short tuk-tuk ride.

The hotel - one of the most relaxing places we’ve stayed at in Thailand - comes beautifully together through a mixture of brilliant environmental policies and inspired management. Happy staff tend the 23 cool suites (every one unique), while guests - long-haul travellers, ex-pats and well-heeled Thais - congregate at the ‘collision cuisine’ restaurant, the swimming pools, or at Spa IV. Outside the grounds, this part of Pranburi is still Old Thailand. It’s a place where local fish cafés, golden wats, grazing oxen and street food sellers reassure you that you’re a long way, at least spiritually, from the soulless corporates further north.

Highs

• The lovely suites have wraparound windows and open-air bathrooms; some have jacuzzis or plunge pools, too, and quirks like trees growing through the ceiling
• The endless sandy beach, the raised infinity pool and a little-known national park on your doorstep
• No hassle: everything is super-cool yet sociable, and there’s a joyful playfulness behind the sophistication (look for the staff’s messages drawn in the sand)
• Food is fun: from the canapés brought round at sunset to breakfast served on a tiered cake stand
• Pranburi has been overlooked by the developers: when we revisited in 2012, the tallest thing on the horizon was still the hill

Lows

• It’s a 3-hour drive or 4-hour train ride from Bangkok
• The beach isn’t Bounty-ad beautiful, but it’s clean, wide and peaceful
• The sea shelves very gently and jellyfish are plentiful, so kite-surfers (and determined swimmers) need leggings and rashies
• Annoyingly, mozzies at dusk and dawn stop you sleeping with your windows open
• Only a handful of the suites’ sundecks are truly private: in the Frangipani Family Wing, you can see into some ground-floor suites from the pool when doors are open