Villa Baan Buaa

Baan Buaa — House of Lotus — is a three-bedroom beachfront villa on Nahai Beach in Hua Thanon, one of Koh Samui’s last authentic fishing villages. It sits just metres from the sand on the island’s quieter southeastern coast, where painted kor le boats still line the shore and daily life keeps a pace most of Samui left behind years ago. For travellers after genuine Thai atmosphere rather than a resort corridor, the setting is hard to beat.

A two-storey main building and a separate ground-floor guest pavilion lend the layout a sense of space few single structures manage. Two king masters take the upper floor of the main house, each with a walk-in wardrobe, a rain-shower en-suite and a furnished balcony over pool, garden and sea, while the third bedroom — a queen in the detached pavilion — opens straight onto the pool terrace for guests who like their own entrance. Throughout, genuine antiques and handcrafted wooden furnishings reflect a considered Thai-Balinese sensibility, with teak and granite in the Western kitchen and a 50-inch screen in the open-plan living area.

Outdoors, the pool is framed by a broad sandstone terrace, and at its far end a raised Thai sala offers a shaded platform for reading, yoga or simply watching the light change over the Gulf. The beach gate is some twenty metres from the sand, and the reef-protected shoreline keeps the water shallow and calm — ideal for families paddling and exploring rock pools. A manager fluent in English, French and Mandarin is included, alongside twice-weekly housekeeping, airport transfers, round-the-clock security and Wi-Fi, with a private chef on hand and cooking classes, snorkelling trips to Koh Tan and Koh Mudsum, or the Hua Thanon morning market all easily arranged. Lamai is ten minutes south, Chaweng thirty north.