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Visit Koh Kood Island
An unforgettable luxury experience in Thailand
By: Mary Gostelow
Koh Kood Island, to the east of the Gulf of Thailand, is so close to the Cambodian coast you think you could swim over there (in fact it is 40 minutes by speedboat).
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The island is only 25,600 acres total, but most of its interior is absolutely wild jungle. Some of it has never been penetrated by man: because of the undergrowth it can take two hours to climb its highest peak, Khao Phaenth, all of 1,000 feet a.s.l. There are coconut and rubber plantations, but increasingly, the just-under 2,000 permanent residents turn to tourism as a means of livelihood to supplement what they earn from fishing. The surrounding waters are crystal clear, and its wonderful beaches include Khlong Chao Beach, Phrao Beach, Ta Pho Beach and Thakian Beach.
The best time to visit is November through to February, when it is relatively cool, dry and mostly sunny. But it is lovely, too, through the slightly warmer period of March through May. At any time, even during monsoons, it is well worth a visit, for it does not rain every day or all day long. People come here to laze on a beach, snorkelling over the beautiful coral reefs or just watching the night stars, and there are lots of neighboring islands to visit. Many small resorts dot the periphery of the island, but since December 2009 Koh Kood offers one of the world’s best destination resorts.
It used to take up to eight hours to get to Koh Kood Island, but now, thanks to Six Senses Resorts and Spas’ innovative founders Eva and Sonu Shivdasani, you can fly from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport to Soneva Kiri by Six Senses Airport, a one-hour flight by Six Senses’s eight-seat Cessna Caravan 208-B, and from there it is five minutes’ speed boat to the resort’s arrival pier. This is, by the way, seamless service: three return flights are available daily, you use Thai Airways first class lounge while waiting for the flight, and you are escorted direct to the plane; the same thing happens on the return.
Soneva Kiri by Six Senses, which occupies 101 acres on the north-west tip of the island, can be described in many ways. Let us try some. Heath Robinson, after a sophistication course has brought him into the 21st century, JRR Tolkien after an architectural course, Louis Vuitton takes up glamping (glamorous camping). The scene is a crescent shaped bay, with palm trees and lush undergrowth coming right down to white sand near the edges of the crystal water. Set in among the greenery are the tops of dozens of Ferrari-designed tent-flysheets supported on trunks of unvarnished farmed pine, Pinex, from New Zealand. Each of the resort’s 29 villas has at least three of these fly-sheets, some of which have two rather than one central point. Yes, the Thai architects, Habita – whose many works include Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, Thailand – have nearly, but not quite, run riot here.
A Feng Shui expert, Gary Hall, described the whole resort as a dragon, and he needed a body. From the arrival pier you progress into a magnificent 300 ft-long bamboo bridge, designed by German bamboo artist Jörg Stamm, as a dragon’s body. The Living Room, which is the communal gathering place, is an extension of the Dragon Bridge. You look ahead about a hundred yards, and up at an angle of some 15 degrees. This entire area, about 20 feet wide, is slatted, but not with all regular planks: at some points the planks switch to another angle, and from time to time there are side staircases leading up, or down, to buildings that flank the walkway. Whole forests of farmed pine, you think, must have been cultivated especially for these buildings, which are one to three floors high; one, the planetarium, has a hemispherical dome on top. Another building is a first class library, with a stack of DVDs and board games and everything from complete works of Shakespeare to the Koran, and a computer with printer - useful for boarding passes. There are art galleries and shops. You can look down, at one point, to the main bar, with the resort’s large pool behind it and, reached by stepping stones, a sunken dining area surrounded by swimmers. At the far end of this Hobbit street is an open sided café, with fuchsia linens on the tables and chairs with backs that are formed of the most unruly sticks anyone could find, and behind this café is the glass-walled working chocolate factory, headed by a former specialist from El Bulli, and a display of 40 metal containers of sensational home-made icecream.
There are 29 detached villas, some set around the cove and others high up in the wooded slopes. Villa 11, a 4,000 sq ft-total beach-set villa, has three of the Ferrari fly-sheets. One, with two central points, flies high over the main bedroom-dressing room building. The others, with single points, cover the outdoor sala area, and the outdoor ablution area that is the size of a curvilinear squash court (the toilet is like a giant termites’ nest, a baked earth kiln which surprisingly houses not only the plumbing but the latest-design, all-glass washbasin and integral stand). The place is full of surprises. The ablution area has a daybed on a base of crushed tree roots, and a half-outdoors and a totally-outdoor shower, and a sunken tub, and two vanity areas, each formed of what looks like eight foot-tall brown leather travelling trunks, opened up to reveal washbasins. These lovely pieces were designed by Eva Shivdasani and made in the Philippines. Louis Vuitton, here you go.
More of this travelling luggage sits at the base of the bed. Here they are suitcases, which open to reveal an iPod dock and DVD equipment and, heaven forbid at Six Senses, a pop-up screen, but only for DVDs rather than television. The ten foot long desk that forms the backside of the bedhead is matching brown leather. The bed, by the way, has a mosquito net suspended above, hanging from the cathedral-type canvas ceiling – yes, remember this is glamping, glamorous camping – from which a fan also hangs, with four petal-shaped wings. So you sit at the desk, look over the bed, and down through palm trees to the water. From Villa 11 you can see the resort’s dock. The bedroom area has three walls of nearly all glass, with a protruding ogee area holding a sofa, with red and yellow cushions. Out on your main deck, to your left, you have two loungers, another day bed, dining for four with brown leather chairs, and matching bright orange water glass and Francisfrancis! espresso machine. You have five yellow umbrellas. Outside, too, is your glass-fronted wine cellar, which includes Duval-Leroy champagne. Wrapping around the whole of the front of your villa is your private infinity pool, 1,350 sq ft and kidney shaped so you can really get good swimming in, though if you want more exercise you can head down your 50 wood steps to your private beach, with its orange umbrella and two loungers: in all, counting each mattress, even if it forms part of an giant L-shape, separately, you have 13
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lounge mattresses in and out of the villa. What else do you get? Lemon sorbet-colored or black Calypso resort bicycles, made in China for Trek (Trek mountain bikes are also available), and a personal Ingersoll Rand electric buggy. The more you stay, the more you realize this is Six Senses grown up.
It is also Six Senses for the 21st century. Lord of the Rings fans will love the resort’s Eco Villa, sheer Hobbit, with not a flat surface or straight line anywhere. Designed by Six Senses’ permanent horticulturalist Louis Thompson, it is essentially circular, built from stone and mud and odd-shaped trunks, and its almost-flat roof is a living garden. The Shivdasanis are among the leading exponents of sustainability in the entire hospitality industry – see the beautiful book Slow Life by Six Senses, éditions Didier Millet, 2009. This shows that Six Senses Resorts & Spas’ mantra of Sustainable Local Organic Wholesome Learning Inspiring Fun Experiences is all part of today’s, and tomorrow’s, game. It shows the biomass absorption chiller that has been installed, for instance, at Evason Phuket & Six Senses Spa, Phuket, Thailand, and how John and Cynthia Hardy’s Green School and Green Camp, Bali are built almost entirely of local packed earth and bamboo, and the gardens provide fruit, vegetables, herbs and even cocoa for the kitchens. Here, at Soneva Kiri, the Shivdasanis have put in a giant bank of solar panels, down near the spa. There is a small organic garden and there are plans for a bigger one, off the property. Food waste is sent to pigs on a distant farm. Throughout the resort, drinking water is produced onsite, by reverse osmosis followed by ultraviolet purification. Sonu Shivdasani also extols the virtues of trying the mineral-rod water, called Vita Juwel, where water has come into contact with hand-made glass rods filled with semi-precious stones and crystals. Try the Fit and Slim water, where glass rods filled with rock crystal, red jasper and magnesit are supposed to increase metabolism and boost your fitness levels (plain water is complimentary but you pay from 150 Baht per jug for a Vita Juwel brew.) This resort is all about making you feel better, whoever you are – apparently a feng shui expert advised that the General Manager’s desk should be turned through 180 degrees.
The Shivdasanis are also turning Soneva Kiri by Six Senses into a community. There are 21 privately-owned villas, with four to six bedrooms, and they are selling fast, minimum price $4.5 million. The owners are attracted by their stunning houses, and also by the facilities of the resort. They can pop to The Living Room, to the bar, with its adjacent glass-walled brown spirits, and white spirits, rooms. There is a coffee bar up here, and the main kitchen, handy for all-day dining, which has several areas, several levels, consistently no side walls. You sit at heavy wood chairs with their rear legs extending to form the back, but one of these extensions is a foot longer than the other. You have soft orange linen mats, soft lemon linen napkins, pale celadon china side plates, an uncoloured earthenware mug, and a white waffle face towel. The music from the waves crashing below suffices for the audio side of an entertainment, rich in the visual memory of turquoise sea, pale blue sky. A basket of bread includes addictive slices of sourdough, nut-studded, chocolate-studded, all home-made and irresistible. The menu changes daily, with plenty of choices for all of the three courses they hope you will have. You might opt for organic leaves from the garden with roast pistachios and garlic croutons, followed by penne with sun-dried tomatoes. At breakfast, there is an outstanding buffet, with at least ten different juices and a myriad of fruits, and you go into the air-conditioned pastry shop to choose your own home-baked breads, cold cuts and cheeses.
Dinner can be in the main restaurant, in your villa, in the modern-Thai fine dining restaurant set to open in March, set up on the resort’s boat dock, on a beach, wherever – or at Benz. Khun Benz, a motherly soul, was cooking for a family in Phuket when Eva Shivdasani made her acquaintance. She was enticed to cook for Six Senses Resorts & Spas, and after six years in the Maldives she moved here. Brit Antony Paton, who was onsite helping get Soneva Kiri by Six Senses open, persuaded the owner of a small house up the Klong Yai Ki river, ten minutes by boat from Soneva Kiri by Six Senses, to rent it to the resort. It has been turned into an open-sided, two-floor restaurant, dinner only, named for Benz. It is a magical arrival, sailing from the dock and past several wooded bays and up the narrow river, past tiny only-few-rooms backpackers’ hangouts. Once there, you can see right into the tiny kitchen where Benz works not to a menu, but whatever produce she has in hand. There is an attractive bar, and a good winelist. Ask for a Thai red and the wine waiter might well offer a Monsoon Valley 2008 Shiraz. This comes from the Hua Hin Hills Vineyard, and it is a pride of the portfolio of Siam Winery, founded by Chalerm Yoovidhya, co-owner of the Ferrari dealership for Thailand and part-owner of Red Bull, which he co-founded with his father and an Austrian entrepreneur, Dietrich Mateschitz. Monsoon Valley has a female German winemaker, Kathrin Puff, and it goes remarkably well with Khun Benz’s dishes, say a spicy salad followed by tempura-type prawns, and chicken or fish red curry with rice cake, and a coconut milk dessert.
You need days here, to visit Khlong Chao waterfall and go mountain biking or hiking, or to make the most of all the watersports. The resort offers an outdoor Cinema Paradiso and there are classes in astronomy and gardening, pilates, stretching and yoga – or pairing wine and chocolate. You will luxuriate in the spa, which has eleven villas reached by a boardwalk meandering through the treetops. (Try the Thai herbal massage, which seemingly cleanses every follicle of your entire too-big body). And, kids only, you will revel in The Den, Dutch architect Olav Bruin's, 24 Hours interpretation of a Hobbit bamboo construction. It perches high above the ground, tree-top level, admittance to adults only if invited by their youngsters: one of the many suspended pods in The Den has a trampoline built into its floor. Some intrepid travelers do, by the way, go across to Cambodia, and then take a two-hour helicopter ride to Siem Reap, to tour the temples of Angkor. Far from being only a distant island, therefore, Koh Kood is paradise and more.
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