By 7am, the queue outside Heng Heng is already doing what Phuket queues do; swallow both pavement and morning whole. A few streets over, the pot at O Cha Rot has been simmering beef balls longer than most people waiting for them have been alive. And somewhere on Thalang Road, Roti Thaew Nam is frying its first roti of the day over charcoal, but is just two hours from selling out until tomorrow. Welcome to Phuket Old Town, the world’s best place to eat breakfast.

The young, effervescent owner of Hotel Verdigris, Pichakorn ‘Peach’ Phanichwong, shares this hyperbole. She’s obsessive about local food, and keeps a personal Phuket guide, which she calls her Peachilin Guide; a list of her favourite spots to eat in the city. She knows which aunty at Mae Ting makes the most aromatic curry sauce, what morning the best cook at Boonrat always takes off, and the crucial preference for a nam dok mai over an okrong when making mango sticky rice. It is, I suspect, a more useful document than that there Michelin, and the first thing she’ll want to discuss when you check in is not your room but your appetite.

And appetite, it turns out, is the whole organising principle of Hotel Verdigris. At check-in, instead of being pointed towards where a buffet will be held the next morning, you’re invited to choose a set menu drawn from a bespoke selection of the Old Town’s shophouses and kitchens, many Michelin-listed, all Peach-accredited. The hotel places the orders. The food arrives hot. You sit under the morning light eating a table’s worth of Phuket’s proudest generational cooking, while everyone else queues in the rising Southern heat for the same plates. It is the finest hotel breakfast I have ever eaten.

The Location

Sandy beaches and a fair amount of unearned bling are the hallmarks of a Phuket holiday, but those in the know will tell you that staying in the Old Town is the more rewarding move. The quarter is legendary for its food scene, with one of the highest concentrations of Michelin pin-drops anywhere on the planet. Hotel Verdigris puts you directly in the thick of it, within walking distance of them all.

You’re on Yaowarat Road, which threads through the Old Town’s most storied streets: Thalang, Phang Nga and Dibuk. Just make sure you tell your taxi driver Phuket Yaowarat, not Bangkok Yaowarat, or you’ll be in for a very long, very expensive ride. Anyway the Verdigris is around 45 minutes’ drive from Phuket International Airport and can arrange a transfer if you’d rather not negotiate the notorious taxi rank.

Yaowarat itself rewards a slow wander. A Pong Mae Sunee, a tiny street stall awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand for several years on the bounce, sits on this very road, turning out charcoal-cooked coconut crepes. Walk the other way and you’ll hit Lock Tien at the Dibuk junction, an indoor food court locals swear by for oh-aew, a shaved-ice dessert with banana and red bean, and Hokkien mee, the stir-fried yellow noodle dish that’s a Phuket signature..

The hotel is also a five-minute stroll from Dibuk Road, the Old Town’s most photogenic street and arguably its best for eating. The municipality has done it the great favour of burying the overhead cables that blight so much of Thailand, leaving the Sino-Portuguese shophouses to do what they do best: glow in the late afternoon light. Raya, at number 48, is an Old Town institution, set inside a beautifully preserved shophouse and known for its moo hong (slow braised pork belly) and yellow crab curry. The Charm Dining Gallery at 93 leans into the same vintage Phuket aesthetic with a menu of island favourites, whilst Royd at 95 offers a more contemporary take on Southern Thai cuisine.

We’re not totally myopic here at IDEAL, and food isn’t the only reason to wander. Soi Rommanee, a few minutes from the hotel, is the Old Town’s most photographed lane, its pastel shophouses now home to galleries and independent boutiques. The Sunday Walking Street Market runs along Thalang Road weekly, and the quarter’s street art, shrines and ceramic shops give you plenty of reason to keep your camera out between meals.

Hotel Verdigris is also a ten-minute walk from a trio of Old Town museums. Phuket Thai Hua on Krabi Road covers the Hokkien Chinese immigration story inside a beautifully restored Sino-Portuguese building. A few minutes on, the free-entry Museum Phuket occupies the former Chartered Bank and the old police station facing each other across the Phang Nga and Phuket Road intersection, with interactive displays on Phuket Baba culture. And further along Krabi Road, Baan Chinpracha is a privately owned mansion still occupied by the family, and a chance to step into a working Peranakan household.

Speaking of which…

Style & Character

Hotel Verdigris isn’t simply a place to stay but rather a setting for cultural immersion in Phuket’s Peranakan heritage, and the whole place has been built around that idea. The Old Town owes its look to the Hokkien Chinese tin merchants who made fortunes here in the 19th century, building the shophouses you’ll be photographing on Dibuk Road in a hybrid Sino-Portuguese vernacular you’ll find in only a handful of Southeast Asian port cities. Verdigris places itself squarely in that lineage.

The hotel’s specific inspiration is Martina Rozells, the Thai-Portuguese woman born in Phuket who became the wife of Colonel Francis Light, the British East India Company officer who governed Penang from 1786. The pair ran a trading post in Junk Ceylon, as Phuket was then known, and Martina’s story threads through every floor of the building.

Opened in 2022, it’s a family-run affair and the debut leadership project of Peach herself, who is of Peranakan Hokkien descent. On the day we visited it was Chinese New Year, and she had stopped by the hotel after coming from her grandmother’s house, still buzzing from the feast she’d just finished. For Peach, Martina Rozells’ background represents the true spirit of being Peranakan on Phuket Island: not just Chinese in Thailand, but something carrying influences from all over the world, including the West.

That layered identity shapes everything you see. The design mixes contemporary luxury with old Phuket character, and the verdigris pigment that gives the hotel its name (the bluish-green patina that forms on weathered copper, brass and bronze) is, in the owner’s words, unpredictable yet intriguing. Both descriptions hold up. Inside, time loosens its grip. There’s nothing to tell you which decade you’re in, or which century for that matter.

The lobby sets the tone and establishes the materials you’ll follow through the building: patinating metals, dark ceilings, low light caught in faceted surfaces. The reception desk, fabricated by Phuket’s legendary Underwood workshop, anchors the space, finished with a custom pendant light that looks, intentionally or not, rather like a brass abacus stretched across the room.

Move further in and the palette deepens – the common areas are a study in Peranakan opulence, velvet and marble joining the metallic accents drawn from the same oxidising tones the hotel is named for. By the entrance to the Sunroom, a vintage Chinese curio cabinet holds the kind of famille rose porcelain Baba households across the Straits have been collecting for centuries, with framed antique maps and trade-route charts above nodding to Rozells’ story playing out a few hundred miles south of here. It is the stairs and corridors that impress most though; take a photo from any angle and it will look like something out of a design magazine, and you the professional who took it.

That sense of rootedness extends beyond the walls. Hotel Verdigris celebrates traditions across the year. At the Mid-Autumn Festival, Hokkien mooncakes and tea are served on the house all day in the Sunroom until 10pm, for in-house guests. When we visited on Chinese New Year, we were gifted a mandarin at check-in. Each season brings its own version of the same thoughtful gesture.

Most hotels are designed for tourists rather than locals. Peach has built one she would want to stay in herself. It’s adults-only, and there’s no sense of having to share the space with the kind of buffet-driven coach traffic that defines most island accommodation. What Verdigris offers, more than anything, is a sense of place: guests feel they’re staying in something of Phuket rather than a backdrop to it

Rooms

Fourteen rooms are spread across four floors, connected by a triangular staircase that zigzags past a koi pond before arriving at each landing. The design language holds throughout: herringbone parquet floors, brass-framed beds, metallic accents, and Peranakan flourishes everywhere you look. The rooms have a sultry, low-lit feel to them, more dusk than dawn in temperament.

We stayed in a Brass room, the entry tier and a comfortable size for couples. One caveat: if you’re a light sleeper, the walls between adjoining rooms are thin enough that we became better acquainted with our neighbours’ television preferences than we’d have liked. That said, those adjoining rooms are a genuine asset if you’re travelling as a small group or a family of grown-ups, connecting cleanly without compromising either side’s privacy.

Bronze rooms step things up in size, with terrazzo bathtubs and, in some, a small balcony overlooking the internal courtyard. The suites push further still, with more generous proportions and better positioning within the building.

The pick of the lot is the Junior Suite with private pool, which opens onto a top-floor terrace running the full length of the room. A long, narrow plunge pool tiled in dark green looks over the Old Town rooftops, and the whole space is shot through with a hush you don’t expect to find in the middle of a city. It’s the room to book if you’re celebrating something, or if you just want a private outdoor space that isn’t shared with the other guests.

Solo travellers are well looked after, too, with a purpose-designed Solo Traveller Room rather than the usual single-supplemented double. It’s a thoughtful touch in a category most hotels treat as an afterthought.

Throughout all rooms, the Peranakan-inflected aesthetic shows itself in hand-painted nightstands in the Baba style, and wood carvings by local artist Kriangrat Thephabutra running across doorframes and furniture. Paintings by Thavorn Merurat, arguably Phuket Old Town’s most respected painter, hang throughout the guestrooms, rendering the Peranakan architectural heritage with a reverie that avoids the merely decorative.

Bathrooms are beautifully done and stocked with high-end products from HARNN, the Thai natural apothecary brand. This is an old building with old plumbing, so resist the urge to flush toilet paper; a bin is provided. The loo itself is Japanese-style, which is a small pleasure in a tropical climate.

The minibar is complimentary, with Starbucks pods, and lemongrass, pandan and butterfly pea tea. There’s Netflix on the tele. Turndown is the kind of small touch that tells you the owner cares: a flask of jiao gu lan tea appears in the evening alongside Tao Sor, a Hokkien-style pastry filled with salted egg, salty and sweet at once. If you fall for them during your stay, head to Keng Tin on Phuket Road who’ve been making them to a century-old recipe.

Beside the tea, the night attendant leaves a handwritten note. On our stay it was from Tong, giving the next day’s sunrise time, the forecast temperature, and when the sun would set. Waking up the following morning was the best part of the whole room; light flooded in, the city was already at work outside, and the day felt entirely ours to use. Might have to revise that idea of dusk and dawn, you know…

You can also have breakfast in bed – you’ll find a little door hanger in your room where you just write your preferred breakfast time. Hang it outside of your door before 5am and breakfast will be delivered.

Facilities

This is a boutique, not a resort, and the facilities are sized accordingly, but what’s there is carefully chosen and well executed.

The marble-lined swimming pool sits at the heart of the building, overlooked by a reading room dotted with antiques, and is a rare hotel pool that’s actually calm enough to read beside. It isn’t a lap pool, but on a sticky Phuket afternoon it does exactly what you need it to. Staff appear with chilled water and towels the moment you sit down, and for much of our stay we had it entirely to ourselves.

The reading room doubles, after dark, as the hotel’s evening hangout. There’s no formal bar at Verdigris, which initially feels like an omission until you work out what’s actually going on: tables set with individual bottles of house single malt, reading glasses and a newspaper, guests writing down their own drams on an honesty system. A record player is on hand, and the deeper whisky list, including Japanese bottlings and limited editions, appears at the press of a button. It’s a far better answer than a hotel bar, and a far more interesting room to spend an evening in.

There’s no spa on site, which is deliberate; the hotel would rather send business to local practitioners than keep it in-house. A massage can be arranged in your room or out by the pool, which is rather more civilised than being driven somewhere across town anyway.

Beside the pool sits a reading pavilion overlooking the koi pond, framed by planting and shaded enough to be useable in the heat of the afternoon. Somewhere to take a book and a coffee that isn’t your room and isn’t the lobby, with the fish for company.

For getting around, the hotel runs a free shuttle that will drop you anywhere in the Old Town, useful in the midday heat even though you can walk to most of the good spots in under ten minutes. Complimentary bikes are on offer for anyone who prefers to explore under their own steam, and the 24-hour front desk is staffed by people who genuinely know the city. Concierge requests we made during our stay, from restaurant bookings to advice on day trips up the coast to a same-day laundry turnaround, were all handled with the same calm competence that defines the rest of the operation.

Food & Drink

Every city has a rhythm, and breakfast is where Phuket sets its tempo. It’s a city thrumming with great breakfasts, and its appetite for the most important meal of the day is second to none. It would feel a tragedy to waste it on a croissant that’s grown stale under yesterday’s heat lamp, then.

The mechanics are worth understanding, because they’re what makes the whole thing work. Rather than partner with a single restaurant or attempt to recreate shophouse cooking in its own kitchen (a fool’s errand given the generational recipes involved), the hotel has built relationships with a rotating cast of the Old Town’s best. You pick your set at check-in, the orders go out the next morning, and the food arrives hot, in the vessels it was cooked in, from kitchens that have been refining these dishes for decades.

Breakfast is served in the Sunroom, a gorgeous green-fronted glasshouse where morning light pours through floor-to-ceiling windows, catches the white linen tablecloths, and makes the whole space feel suspended outside of time. Which is fitting, because the food arriving at your table has been cooked to recipes handed down for generations, in kitchens that were here long before the hotel was, and will be here long after. It’s the right room for that kind of meal.

It’s also the kind of room that makes you slow down and order a second coffee, which is precisely what you should do, because breakfast is leisurely and the rest of the day can wait. Local coffee, of course, strong and properly made.

The set we ate ran like a greatest-hits compilation of Old Town breakfast cookery. Kanom Jeen Mae Jing arrived first: fermented rice noodles with Southern Thai curry sauces, the kind of breakfast that wakes you up properly. You get to choose two curries from fish, crab, peanut, chicken or fish entrails. We went with crab and peanut following the advice of Peach.

Then the Heng Heng southern signature set. Rice salad with boodoo sauce – about as iconic as it gets down south – alongside an earthy, brooding mushroom soup that could cure last night’s deepest, most entrenched woes, pillowy pork buns, and two boiled eggs for good measure.

And Kanom Jeeb Boon Rat, another Phuket stalwart, this time a dim sum specialist. You get four handmade dumplings; both pork and shrimp shumai, har gow, and pork and seaweed. There’s also a peppery, restorative congee and steamed taro cake. Just an incredible spread, whichever way you play it.

For guests who’d rather ease into Phuket gently, the Sunroom also turns out a Western breakfast made in-house – eggs cooked any way you like, toast, the usual cast – but you’re rather missing the point if you order it. The whole reason to be here is to eat the city.

The sets rotate with the seasons. During Kin Jay, the nine-day Taoist-rooted Vegetarian Festival held each October when many Thai-Chinese households go strictly vegan, Jay Fried Hokkien Noodle becomes the breakfast move, and the Eew Geng parade passes right in front of the hotel.

Whatever the time of year, every set arrives with an Ang Ku Kueh, the red turtle-shaped dessert of glutinous rice flour and sweet mung bean paste that sits on Baba praying tables during the Hungry Ghost Festival. Turtles, as Peach explains, are believed to travel between earth and heaven, carrying messages between the two realms, and embodying strength and longevity for the living as well as the departed. It’s a lot of meaning to pack into one sticky red sweet, and it’s delicious besides.

It’s the kind of breakfast that makes you understand why the owner started the hotel in the first place: she wanted guests to eat what she eats, and she’s removed every barrier to making that happen. Including, it would seem, price. This monumental breakfast offering comes at no extra cost, whichever tier of room you’re staying in.

Ideal For…

Small, design-led and rooted in Phuket’s Peranakan heritage, Hotel Verdigris fills a specific gap in the island’s hotel market: it’s for travellers who’d rather stay in a living city than at a beach resort.

Anyone who travels to eat. No other hotel in Phuket treats breakfast this seriously, and the Old Town location puts you within walking distance of more Michelin-listed cooking than most cities serve in a lifetime. If you keep a spreadsheet of Bib Gourmands, this is the hotel built for you.

Repeat Phuket visitors who’ve done the beach. If you’ve worked through Surin, Kamala and Patong on previous trips and want something different, the Old Town is the version of the island most first-timers miss. Verdigris is the best base for it.

Travellers who like to understand a place before they walk it. Martina Rozells’ story runs through the whole building, and the hotel works as a proper introduction to Phuket’s Sino-Portuguese heritage rather than treating it as backdrop. You leave knowing what you were looking at.

Solo travellers who’d rather not be treated like an afterthought. The purpose-designed Solo Traveller Room, the evening whisky setup, and staff who curate rather than hover make this a warmer place to stay alone than most.

It’s less suited to anyone after a beachfront resort. The Old Town is inland, and if you want sun loungers and a swim-up bar, Phuket has plenty that does that well. Families will also want to look elsewhere: this is an adults-only property.

Why Stay?

What Hotel Verdigris understands is that the best version of hospitality is sometimes knowing when to outsource. The rooms are beautiful, the design has genuine soul, and the Old Town location can’t be beaten.

But it’s the breakfast, sourced from the best shophouses within a ten-minute walk, that elevates this from a charming boutique to a destination in its own right. Come for the Peranakan interiors and Martina Rozells’ story, stay for the kanom jeen, and pack your appetite. You’ll need it.

Rates at Hotel Verdigris start with the Brass Room – a 22-25 sqm entry tier with twin or king configurations – from around 6,000 baht (£140) per night, with significant seasonal variation. All rates include the hotel’s celebrated breakfast.

Address: 154 Yaowarad Rd, Tambon Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket

Website: hotelverdigris.com

The taxi driver slowed, squinted, and doubled back. Google Maps had deserted him, deserted us both. He pulled two U-turns and we were back at the start, both dizzy somewhere above Layan Beach on Phuket’s north-west coast, climbing a road that kept promising a turnoff it never quite delivered. When the entrance to The Pavilions Phuket finally revealed itself, low and unmarked between two walls of green, the driver chuckled wryly, shrugged and turned in, the reassuring click-clack of an indicator confirming progress at last.

What followed was the kind of hotel arrival that recalibrates the nervous system before a single member of staff has even said hello. A thick canopy parts in front of you and then seals shut once you’ve driven through, troubles left behind, snagged in the hedges and unable to follow you in. A seated Buddha watches over the entrance, gracing those passing through.

Past him, a bamboo-lined lane climbs from the gate towards the lobby, the stalks arching overhead into a tunnel so complete that the Andaman sun drops into a green half-light. Somewhere up ahead, a pair of hawks circle the thermals rising off the hillside. I imagined them watching guard over the hotel, as if part of the choreography. The airport, thirty minutes and a world away, ceased to exist.

None of this happened by accident. The Pavilions Phuket, now in its third decade, is one of the island’s quieter, more deliberate propositions. It does not sit on the sand. It does not court day-trippers or the beach-club set. Its villas are scattered across a hillside vast enough that golf buggies are not a gimmick, just the only sensible way to get around. In a corner of Phuket where resorts have multiplied to the point of indistinguishability, it has spent the last twenty years doubling down on privacy, seclusion and the kind of slow, thickly upholstered hospitality you’d forgotten to miss until now.

The Location

Up on the hill, people never stare
They just don’t care
Chinese music under banyan trees
Here at the dude ranch above the sea

Up on the hill, they’ve got time to burn
There’s no return
Double helix in the sky tonight
Throw out the hardware, let’s do it right

Becker and Fagen weren’t writing about The Pavilions Phuket, but they could have been. It’s a song that comes to mind once you’ve spent time ensconced in your villa’s seclusion. Or it does if you consider yourself a Danimal, at least.

The Pavilions Phuket sits at the top end of Phuket’s sleepier north-west coast, an area that has increasingly become the island’s luxury stronghold. Trisara, Anantara Layan and the massive Laguna Phuket resort complex are all within a few kilometres. Patong, bearing the cumulative effect of several decades of mass tourism, is around 45 minutes south, its fallout not troubling this peaceful corner.

Layan itself is the kind of beach Phuket used to be better known for. It falls within the boundaries of Sirinat National Park, which gives it a degree of protection most of the island’s shores no longer enjoy. That said, a stay at The Pavilions Phuket isn’t really about the beach.

Practically, Phuket International Airport is around 25 minutes north. Cherngtalay, the nearest village proper, is a five-minute drive and worth a wander for its local restaurants and morning market. Porto de Phuket and Boat Avenue, the two main shopping and dining clusters in the area, are both inside ten minutes by car or buggy.

Character & Style

Scene safely set, and we’re pulling in. The lobby is gorgeous, a stone Buddha presiding from the centre, and those hawks still overhead. For a moment we wonder if they’re drones, flown by a skilled member of staff just off camera. That suspicion is allayed when one swoops down and kills a squirrel somewhere on the absolutely vast vista. Tropical upholstered chairs make you resent your living room for all its sad beige, and there are tastefully judged elephants. I’m sure one’s trunk moved. I start wondering if there was something in the brownie I had at breakfast.

Guests here are handed a gong mallet on arrival and asked to strike it three times, the resort’s take on Thai temple tradition, to mark the start of the stay. A nice touch, and a useful one: it gives you a moment to pause before the check-in paperwork starts, to truly take in that view, which is breathtaking. Genuinely so; though that shortness of breath might be the altitude. The gong strikes seem to reverberate across the whole skyline through huge open windows. It’s quite the entrance.

You’re encouraged to download the Pavilions app at this stage, and despite it bringing you back down to earth somewhat, it’s well worth doing. More on why shortly.

From the lobby, the resort sprawls across an expansive hillside complete with widescreen ocean views at the back, so golf buggies whizz between villas, restaurants and the spa, driven by staff who know the place inside out. One driver had been here more than a decade. He said he knew every bump and turn of the grounds with his eyes closed, and after several journeys in his care, the claim checked out. Yep, he drove with his eyes closed. There’s also a doorless car knocking about on shuttle duty, which lends a bit of rustic charm to a place that could otherwise tip into corporate polish. Sure, the temptation is strong to roll out the side and do a big military roll all the way down to Cherngtalay, but that would be silly.

One side effect of being whisked about: the resort feels larger than it actually is. You lose your bearings. On our third day we realised we were just a five-minute walk from the Alto bar after all, not the other side of a mountain, and had been calling for a chariot for every trip. Worth orienting yourself on day one, if only to feel less sheepish about it on day three.

Architecturally it’s all low-slung buildings with palm and bamboo pressing in from every angle. More private estate than hotel, which is very much the point. There’s a backstory worth knowing here. The Pavilions was founded by Gordon Oldham, a British lawyer based in Hong Kong who, before hotels, ran his own publishing house, launched MTV Asia and set up the adventure travel company Action Asia Events. The first Pavilions opened in Bali in 2000, more or less as a hobby; Phuket followed a couple of years later, originally with just 25 ocean-view villas on the Layan hillside the resort still sits on. There are now nine properties in the group, across Asia and Europe.

The vintage shows. The Phuket property sits in direct conversation with the design language that defined Asian boutique luxury in the early 2000s. Generous villas, a handsome helping of outdoor living, and total privacy ahead of pageantry. Two decades on, the place still feels like its founding intent, and that’s its strongest asset: not the biggest hotel on the island, not the flashiest, just the most committedly private.

The Rooms

We stayed in a Tropical Pool Villa, and the word that keeps coming back is ‘space’. Indecent amounts of it. This isn’t a hotel room; it’s a house. In fact, it’s a house bigger than mine back in Bath. The bathroom alone could probably swallow my kitchen whole and have enough room for dessert. There’s a lounge, a kitchen, a separate bedroom, a bathroom with a soaking tub on its own proud plinth, a standalone shower room, a WC, and a whopping outdoor area with a private plunge pool and sala.

Some setups even have their own dedicated spa. Therapists enter via their own doorway, which is a thoughtful bit of design: you can have a two-hour massage without anyone in the wider villa being disturbed. Mind you, when you’re complaining about a massage disturbing you, you’ve probably had enough luxury for the rest of your life.

The villas are built on a working assumption: that given enough space, enough privacy and a plunge pool a few paces from the bed, a guest will eventually stop performing the small, constant courtesies of being seen and just be. Which, surely, is what you came for.

What the villa really offers isn’t luxury, exactly. It’s permission. Permission to stop checking the time. Permission to eat breakfast in the pool, lunch on the sala, and dinner wherever feels closest. Permission to let the day shape itself around small, private pleasures rather than any plan you’d arrived with. Three days in and the outside world starts to feel like something you can take or leave. Mostly leave. Your energy is instead spent imagining what it would be like to live here, investigating property prices on the complex (a handful of the villas are sold as residences), and then retreating into fantasy when you see the number of zeros.

Breakfast can be of the floating variety, if you like. Picture this: a tray of tropical fruit, pastries and coffee floated out onto your private pool, drifting between you and your partner, the Andaman sun filtering through the palms, the water cool against your skin. You don’t have to picture it; it’s right there below.

It is the antithesis of the buffet shuffle. Just be careful not to drop your pastry; chlorine and croissants don’t mix.

It’s absolutely worth doing at least once. A ludicrous, wonderful thing. Miraculously, the tray doesn’t sink under the weight of the feast, though it does float off to the far end of the pool unless you keep it anchored. Not to worry, get a photo and take the rest of your meal to the table, where it belongs.

That’s the morning, and evenings have their own gravitational pull too. One night we stayed in, ordered a burger, and watched a film. Overhearing conversations at dinner the following night, I gathered other guests were planning the same thing. This is not a hotel that pressures you to explore, or will judge you for not getting out of your pyjamas for the whole weekend. The rooms are comfortable enough that choosing to stay put feels like the right decision, which is no small feat in a place with a 60-metre pool and three restaurants onsite.

Curious (nosey, to be honest), we asked for a tour of the other categories, and they confirmed the pattern: these are houses, not hotel rooms. A giddy peek into how the other half live. The impression you’re left with is less hotel, more celebrity real-estate viewing. Cribs, essentially, which is fitting given the founder’s MTV past.

The lineup runs from 81m² Tropical View Suites in the main wing (the only category under £100 a night) up to 595m² three- and four-bedroom pool villas with their own 14-metre infinity pools. In between sit the Spa & Pool Pavilions, the Tropical and Ocean View Pool Villas, and a two-storey Pool Loft with a full kitchen. Roughly half the categories are 12+ only, so families should check room type carefully before booking.

Facilities & Spa

The Pavilions app is the unassuming, omnipresent hero of the stay. You book restaurants, buggy pickups, activities, spa treatments and excursions through it, and the messages are written by actual humans on-site rather than a chatbot. During the visit, a friendly note came through reminding us it was mayfly season and worth dimming the villa lights unless we wanted to host a full entomological convention. We dimmed the lights, and we’re sure the all-seeing app would have known if we hadn’t.

Through the app you can arrange transport to Phuket Town, Big Buddha, Layan, Patong, Kamala, basically any beach on the island, plus Tesco Lotus runs and a visit to Wat Pra Thong, the temple of the half-buried golden Buddha. The weekend market and the nearest Villa Market (at Porto de Phuket, part of the Central Group, one of Thailand’s largest retail conglomerates) are also on the list. There’s a complimentary scheduled shuttle to Layan Beach three times a day each way, and a separate one to Villa Market.

The app also surfaces further afield excursions: day trips to the Phi Phi Islands and the Similan Islands, a hike at Bang Pae waterfall, and the rainforest trails of Khao Phra Thaeo National Park. Khao Phra Thaeo protects Phuket’s last remaining virgin rainforest, with barking deer, langurs, gibbons and around 100 bird species, and is well worth a visit to see a different side of the island.

Complimentary daily activities rotate through the week: Thai sweet making, animal towel folding (admit it; you’ve always wondered how it’s done), herbal compress workshops, cocktail classes, cultural sessions. The clever thing is the scale. Sweet making isn’t a two-hour production; someone shows you how to prepare kluai buat chi (banana in coconut milk), you make it in fifteen minutes, and you eat it. Same with the cocktail class. You make one drink behind the bar, you drink the drink. It’s not some massive, enduring commitment, but a short, sharp shot of fun.

Anyway, if you want the recipe for The Pavilions Phuket house cocktail, here it is, verbatim from the barman, who was a bloody friendly fella, we should add:

• 30ml cucumber syrup
• 50ml sugar syrup (less if you want it drier; you can always adjust upwards)
• 45ml gin
• 30ml lime juice

Shake hard over ice, top with a dash of tonic, garnish with cucumber. It’s bracing, herbal, skilfully balanced. I’d drink it in Bath. Or, indeed, in the bath.

Elsewhere on the grounds, there’s a pond with koi you can feed, a weekly cinema night at Firefly, the main restaurant and its adjacent pool, where you can enjoy the screening whilst bobbing about in the water. That’s a new one on us, and really frivolous, too. Also, quite wrinkly, but there you go.

Cooking classes are run from Firefly too, and start at 2,800 baht. You can choose from four menu options: Ayutthaya, Rattanakosin, Southern Thai and Sukhothai. You can also book an in-villa barbecue where a chef comes to you and cooks on your terrace, if you truly don’t want to get out of your PJs.

The gym is perhaps the one weak note. The kit is serviceable but the space is a little dated, and worn in places. If your holiday depends on a state-of-the-art weights floor, this isn’t the place. If you’re happy with a treadmill, some free weights and the option of a Thai massage afterwards, you’ll be fine.

There’s also a 25-metre lap pool attached to the fitness centre, which is where to head if you want focused swimming. The villa plunge pools are beautiful but designed for wading rather than lengths; the lap pool is where you’d actually clock some distance. Back to splashing and sprawling, the Firefly Pool is a vast 60-metre freeform body of water that sits pretty next to the restaurant. It has pool club vibes, and is a focal point for guests who have settled on being sociable.

Food & Drink

The resort has three restaurants and bars to play with: 360° Bar at the hill’s summit, Firefly Pool & Restaurant at the centre of the property, and Alto Italian Restaurant & Bar for the more committed foodies in the squad. There’s also those in-villa options.

360° Bar is the headline venue, quite literally. Perched at the resort’s highest point, it looks out over the Andaman towards Layan and Bang Tao, with the sun dropping directly into the sea most evenings. One evening we went, a tropical storm kicked up, which was even more dramatic than the sunset. The lightning forked over the sea, the rain clouds pressed in, and the rising chorus of crickets was deafening in the best possible way. The cocktails are creative, the Japanese sharing plates are a smart fit for the setting, and the whole thing feels several cuts above the usual resort rooftop. Book ahead, as sunset slots go first.

Firefly borders the resort’s 60-metre freeform pool, and in the evening the whole space lights up like its namesake. This is also where the breakfast buffet is served. It’s not the most extensive spread you’ll find at a five-star in Southeast Asia, but it covers the key bases and throws in a couple of lovely surprises, chiefly ice cream for breakfast (the standout being a lod chong Thai dessert turned gelato, properly good), and pancakes that are thick and eat like clouds. Come early for a seat outside, and take a coffee back to the villa when you’re done; takeaway cups are provided.

A customer relations manager floats around at breakfast, not overstaying her welcome when you’re bleary-eyed and tired, but a useful touchpoint in case you have any questions or need help with anything. Otherwise you could go the entire stay without seeing a single staff member. Hang on, we realise that sounds like she was bobbing about in the pool dispensing advice…

At lunch and dinner, the menu splits into a Thai Corner and a Western Corner. If this were a Muay Thai bout, I’d be in the Thai Corner every time. The local specialities are the reason to eat here: moo hong, the southern Thai pork belly stew braised with black pepper and garlic that’s particular to Phuket; Phuket pineapple fried rice; and gaeng poo bai chaplu, a southern blue crab curry with wild betel leaves that’s a regional classic. From the Western side, the pasta section delivers (the Italian training at the company’s sister property in Rome is evident), and there’s a wood-fired pizza oven turning out solid margheritas and more. Sandwiches and burgers handle the crowd-pleaser duty.

Alto is the quieter, more grown-up operation, twinned with the award-winning Alto in Rome. It has earned a spot on our list of the best Italian restaurants in Phuket, and rightly so. The cooking is contemporary southern Italian with a serious commitment to local sourcing – organic Phuket heirloom tomatoes, Thai wagyu from Nornuea Farm, and the striking seven-coloured Phuket lobster all feature on the menu. If Alto is fully booked for dinner and you want really good Italian, Five Olives is just a ten-minute Grab away and does arguably the best pizza on the island.

You can also take an à la carte breakfast at Alto for a more refined start to the day, and the adjacent Alto bar is also where the complimentary afternoon tea and evening cocktails are served when 360° is full, which turns out to be a clever bit of operational planning.

One of the standout features of staying in a villa here is the daily villa benefits: complimentary afternoon tea, followed by free-flow drinks and tapas each evening. For a hotel at this price point, these feel genuinely generous rather than tokenistic, and they bring structure to the day in a pleasing way. There’s also a pool table and a space for board games, and we spent most afternoons here, shooting pool and drinking house cocktails. Heaven, really.

For the final boss of room-service, The Pavilions Phuket offers an in-villa barbecue. A chef arrives at the villa with the grill, the marinades and the sides, and cooks in front of you while you sit with a cocktail. It’s the logical extension of the “do you even need to leave the room?” philosophy that runs through the whole resort. The option is also there to give the chef the night off and take the tongs into your own hands. A lovely touch, we think.

Ideal For…

Privacy-first, couples-oriented and slow-paced by design, The Pavilions Phuket fills a specific gap in Phuket’s hotel market: it’s for people who want the island’s beauty without the beachfront crowds, and who’d rather spend their days in a villa than at a beach club.

Couples and honeymooners. Over half the villa categories are adults-only, floating breakfasts are built for two, and the daily villa benefits pace the day in a way that encourages lingering rather than rushing.

Travellers who prize privacy over scene. Villas are scattered across the hillside and you can go most of a day without crossing paths with another guest. The app lets you book everything from spa treatments to excursions without the rigmarole of speaking to anyone at a desk.

Slow travellers and long-stay guests. Three or four nights feels short here; a week is about right. The villas reward settling in rather than ticking off sights.

Food-focused visitors. Alto is one of the best Italian restaurants on the island, Firefly’s Thai Corner covers Phuket’s regional specialities with care, and 360° handles sunset cocktails and Japanese sharing plates. You could eat well here for a weekend without repeating yourself.

It’s perhaps less suited to anyone after a beachfront resort with direct sand-between-toes access, as Layan is a ten-minute shuttle away. Families with young children will want to check room type carefully, as roughly half the villa categories are 12+ only. And the gym is functional rather than flashy, so fitness buffs might feel a touch bereft.

Why Stay?

Because The Pavilions Phuket does something surprisingly rare in Southern Thailand’s high-end hotel market: it commits fully to seclusion. There’s no pretence that you’re five minutes from a bustling beach club, no strain to be all things to all travellers. It’s a hillside hideaway for couples, honeymooners and anyone who wants their Phuket week to be more about the villa, the plunge pool and the view than about nightlife and crowds.

One of the most genuinely relaxing stays I’ve had in Phuket, and a resort that understands its own assignment. Come for the villas, stay for the view, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself cancelling half your excursions in favour of another afternoon at the pool.

Suites from around 4,080 THB (approximately £95) per night, villas from around 12,750 THB (approximately £300), rising significantly in peak season.

Address: 31 1, Choeng Thale, Thalang District, Phuket

Website: pavilionshotels.com/destinations/phuket/the-pavilions-phuket

There is a moment, somewhere between the entrance and your tent, when the present tense loosens its grip. Something shifts. The movement of canvas fluttering gently in the breeze, the brass fittings catching the afternoon light in a place rendered in immaculate, hazy sepia, the low hum of cicadas tuning up for the evening: it is the set of a story from another era, a world of slow, soundtracking ceiling fans, letters written by hand, and expeditions that have not yet acquired an itinerary.

If you have watched Out of Africa with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and found yourself coveting a certain vintage safari style, nostalgic for the golden age of travel, you are not alone. The romantic notion of this kind of adventure has held travellers in its grip for the better part of a century, and shows no sign of letting go.

In the wrong hands, it can feel trite, as if every luxury hotel PR deck from Botswana to Rajasthan has borrowed the same mood board. But when it’s pulled off with real conviction, it works.

Twinpalms Tented Camp, an adults-only retreat that opened in December 2024, is one of the most convincing attempts to pair modern comfort with old-world charm we’ve encountered, in actual Africa or, erm, out of it, borrowing the romance of the safari lodge but blessing them with Thai touches. It also marks the Twinpalms group’s first foray into the luxury tented-camp concept, and it exists because of one man’s obsession.

Olivier Gibaud has run Twinpalms as General Manager since the group’s Swedish founder Carl Langenskiöld opened the first property on Surin Beach in 2004. A trip to South Africa and India had left him with a specific preoccupation: luxury tented camps. During Covid, with nowhere to go and time to fill, he ordered a tent from Dutch design studio Escape Nomad and put it up in his garden near Phuket Town (sounds a bit like my Covid, but swap Phuket Town for Stockwell, and garden for living room, pretending it was Glastonbury). One tent became five. He named the project Aladdin Luxury Camp, handed it to his son Sebastian to run as a separate business, and it still operates today near Royal Phuket Marina.

But the idea didn’t stop there. Gibaud’s enthusiasm for the format eventually won over the Twinpalms group, which originally opened its first five tents on Bang Tao Beach, and added a further 24 around a purpose-built lagoon shortly afterwards.

The Location

The first thing you notice once you’re through the gate is the stillness. Not the absence of noise, because the crickets see to that, a wall of sound so appropriate for the setting it almost feels piped in. Rather, it’s the absence of a particular noise that follows you around Phuket’s west coast: the low-grade drone of a place that has been packaged for consumption, the nondescript ‘tropical vibes’ playlist, both aural and aesthetic. The tented camp isn’t that.

Sitting pretty around a purpose-built lagoon, the camp occupies a strip just back from Bang Tao Beach, set apart from it in a way that most of Bang Tao’s west coast properties are not. Across from the site, livestock graze open land, a reminder that this part of Phuket still has a rural hinterland that the tourism boom has not entirely consumed.

The world outside feels considerably further away than it is. The beach itself is a two-minute walk from the lagoon tents, though nobody here expects you to walk. This is still five-star luxury after all, just dressed up a little differently. There is no neighbourhood to wander here, no street food strip a short walk away. The camp sits on Bang Tao Beach Road, which is functional rather than characterful, and guests without a scooter or taxi are largely dependent on the Twinpalms network for eating and drinking.

Given the quality of what that network offers, this is less of a limitation than it sounds. A buggy is on hand whenever you need it, shuttling guests between the tents and Twinpalm’s Catch Beach Club and Lazy Coconut a few minutes up the road. A separate shuttle connects all other Twinpalms properties (we told you that no one expects you to walk), including Wagyu Steakhouse at the Twinpalms Surin and Shimmer at Twinpalms MountAzure.

A bit further out, Boat Avenue and Porto de Phuket are around three kilometres inland, with the best concentration of international restaurants in the area and a well-stocked supermarket. Surin, a smaller, more boutique stretch of sand with its own strong café and dining scene, is just over two kilometres south. That trusty shuttle will take you there if you get itchy feet.

Character & Style

But why would you, unless the mozzies have feasted on your ankles, of course? This is the kind of place you come to switch off, to digitally detox, to linger…

…but not to do any actual animal spotting, we should add. If you came expecting an actual safari, you’re in the wrong place. But you didn’t, did you? Because you did your due diligence and read this first. The most exotic wildlife you will encounter at Twinpalms Tented Camp is a handful of buffalo grazing across the road, the occasional soi dog sniffing around, some carp doing lazy laps of the lagoon, and a rotating cast of brightly coloured birds.

It is not safari, not remotely, but the sensibility is there, and it works in setting a tone. In the evening, the camp takes on a different character entirely. Sitting in the main lodge makes you feel weightless and timeless, especially out on the deck with a sundowner in hand, watching the day soften and the sky’s reflection settle on the water. You could be anywhere, at any time, in any century, the decorative silver pineapples on your table and the real thing in your cocktail the only clue you’re at 7.88° N latitude. Try plonking yourself here and guessing the decade without context; you’d struggle.

The tropical garden is still in its infancy, but there is enough lush planting to give the camp a real sense of seclusion, and the curling lagoon lends a stillness to the communal areas that the beach itself cannot. There’s a meditative quality to the whole setup that encourages you to breathe deeper, further reflected in the eco-sensibility of the operation. The tents have been designed to keep their environmental footprint minimal, and once the lease on the land expires it can be returned to nature far more easily than a concrete resort could manage. Build lightly, leave lightly.

Service is excellent in the particular way that only the very best hospitality is: things get done before you realise you need them, your tent turned down and your sundowner topped up, a buggy appearing without you signalling that you wanted one, all of it happening in the background.

The Tents

The camp is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, increasingly something we look out for when choosing a hotel, a real marker of quality. Twenty-nine canvas tents are split between two distinct settings: five by the beach, and twenty-four arranged along a lagoon designed by Bangkok-based landscape architect Martin Palleros. Some tents come with private plunge pools, and there are two-bedroom configurations for groups.

The tents themselves were designed by Anneke van Waesberghe of Escape Nomad, the Dutch studio behind properties such as Indonesia’s Sandat Glamping Tents. Step inside and the canvas rises to a peaked canopy that gives the space a surprising sense of height, a breathability, while the wooden frame of the four-poster bed echoes that upward geometry.

The palette is restrained: muted neutrals, beige canvas walls, dark wood, white linen, polished concrete underfoot, fabric blinds that roll up completely to open the tent to the garden. Zebra-print cushions on the sofa at the foot of the bed are an obvious nod to the safari concept, pitched at exactly the right level of wink. Everything else is warm and unshowy. The effect is not minimalism so much as careful editing. It feels comforting to settle into a space that’s clearly had so much consideration.

The desk looks like it belongs in the study of someone who writes letters by hand: director’s chair, brass reading lamp, a decorative globe for good measure. Spin that thing to your heart’s content, playfully pretending to randomly choose your next destination (just us, then?). Despite the period-piece atmosphere, the modern conveniences we have become accustomed to all abound: air conditioning, rain showers, a Nespresso machine with the owner’s bespoke blend of coffee in the pods, complimentary Wi-Fi. Yes, there is Wi-Fi.

There is not, however, a television, and that absence is one of the best things about the place. Most hotel TVs the world over offer one English-language channel, and it’s the news, so you end up watching the world’s various catastrophes unfold from the comfort of your holiday, which rather defeats the point of being on one. Sometimes it’s better to have the option removed entirely. The Wi-Fi does mean you could, in theory, doomscroll from bed, but doing so in a luxury tent feels perverse. The building is gently encouraging you to put the phone down, and it’s a credit to the place that most guests are more than willing to take the hint and oblige.

Outside, a cushioned daybed swings beneath a covered terrace, and beyond it, the plunge pool. This, more than the bed or the sofa, is where the days actually happen. Guests drift from one to the other and back again, a book open on the daybed, a half-finished drink on the edge of the pool, the afternoon softening around them. The whole setup lets you move from bed to sofa to daybed to pool without ever feeling like you have left one continuous, cohesive space.

That indoor-outdoor fluidity is the thing the tents do best, and it is also, not coincidentally, very Scandi. Friluftsliv, literally ‘open-air life’, is the Nordic idea that being partially outdoors, consistently, is better for you than being either fully indoors or fully exposed. The tents are an architecture built around that idea.

Back inside, and the minibar menu card lists prices that suggest it is there for convenience rather than profit (two Singha clock in at a reasonable 130 baht, £3, for instance). The fridge itself is a thing of beauty, a retro trunk-style unit in cream with tan leather trim that looks as though it has just come off a 1930s expedition. It is one of those details that tells you the people who designed these tents were thinking about every object in the room, not just the big pieces. A subtle reminder that this is still luxury; crisps come in caviar or black truffle flavour, both the esteemed Torres brand.

The mosquito net was not strictly necessary during our stay, but we drew it anyway. There is something about being cocooned under a gauzy canopy that makes you sleep better, even safer. Twinpalms provides a beautifully scented citronella spray too, which is a nice touch. It’s an aroma that always brings a nostalgia for holidays in this part of the world, and I’ll now forever be reminded of staying in this handsome tent when I smell it.

After dark, a few more buildings in the surrounding area light up, and the thump of music from a neighbouring venue carries on the breeze. The tents on the lagoon side are well insulated by distance and planting, and the noise barely registers.

The beachfront tents offer something different, sitting closer to Catch Beach Club, which plays music from mid-morning until around midnight and tends toward the bass-heavy end of the spectrum. Earplugs are made available for light sleepers, and they are worth accepting. If peace and quiet is the priority, ask for a lagoon tent at the northern end of the camp. If the beach club scene and rolling into bed after a decent party is the draw, the beachfront tents put you close to the action, though be aware that the beach itself is a short walk through the Lazy Coconut café rather than directly in front of your tent.

As a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, certain energy-saving measures are in place, such as the air conditioning pausing when the doors are left open. Worth knowing if you like to throw the blinds up and let the garden in without running the AC at the same time.

Facilities & Spa

The camp’s wellness and fitness facilities are designed as intimate amenities rather than sprawling resort-style operations, in keeping with the scale and style of the place. A gym studio with gorgeous handcrafted NOHrD equipment (compact enough that one or two people is the realistic capacity), a four-seat sauna, a couple’s hot tub and an ice bath are all there for guests to use freely. Bikes are available for hire, and morning yoga is offered in the communal area.

In the wellness garden, a sensory reflexology circle called the Three Paths of Peace invites you to step in barefoot and walk three surfaces in turn: smooth stones for grounding, textured stones to wake up awareness, and sand to encourage balance and release. It’s the kind of small, deliberate ritual the camp does well, and you leave it walking a little slower than you arrived.

The tropical pool, which overlooks the lagoon, is a relatively new addition. It arrived in July 2025, roughly eighteen months after the camp first opened, and was introduced so guests could swim without having to head to Catch Beach Club or The Lazy Coconut every time the mood struck. It’s not a swim-laps-at-dawn size, but it doesn’t need to be. A dip between spa treatment and sundowner, shaded by palms and with the shimmering water just beyond, is exactly the register the camp is pitching at.

On arrival you are handed a glass of fresh coconut water, and it is the best we’ve had in twenty years of drinking the stuff in Thailand. I asked for another. And then another. I then realised it was available on tap at the other side of the reception desk.

There was originally a dedicated spa tent on site, but demand for rooms was such that they converted it into another guest tent, and now the spa comes to you. This is actually the better arrangement. A massage in the privacy of your own tent, with the garden or beach just outside, beats navigating the grounds in a robe, and the post-massage drift off across the bed with nobody to disturb you makes it more restorative too.

The camp runs what it calls ‘daily moments’, small experiences slotted into the day’s rhythm. One afternoon it was a mango tasting. Thai mangoes are one of the reasons to come to this country in the first place, impossibly honeyed, buttery, so pleasurable they verge on the obscene. Nam dok mai at peak season, eaten off a plastic tray from a street cart for forty baht, is better than most desserts served in most Michelin restaurants. The one served at the tented camp, splayed open so each cube was perfectly bite-size, was genuinely the nicest mango I’ve ever eaten. Just look at that deep colour, and its juicy dappling!

Another of the daily moments is the chime hanging at five o’clock. You are given a small brass chime and a pen, write a wish on it, and hang it on a designated tree with the others. I wonder how many folk wish for another night here? We did ours by the lagoon with a cocktail, while a woman played traditional Thai music a few feet away and the sky changed colour over the grounds. The Romans called them tintinnabula and hung them for good fortune, which is more or less what the camp is doing here. A lovely thing, but boy do you realise your handwriting has got sloppy.

Guests get access to Catch Beach Club and The Lazy Coconut, with two passes offering a 50% discount on sun lounger reservations. Worth knowing that a day bed at Catch runs to around 1,500 baht per person at full rate, which is steep even by Phuket beach club standards. The 50% discount takes some of the sting out, but it’s still worth factoring in if you’re planning full beach days.

One small note on the in-tent beach bag: it looks like a complimentary gift, but it is in fact for sale at €65. Worth clocking before you unpack it.

Food & Drink

There is no restaurant on site, and this is by design. A small menu is available via the camp’s app, though food is not permitted inside the tents given the open canvas and the wildlife it would otherwise attract. You can eat at the main lodge, or have a table set up just outside your own.

The menu splits cleanly down the middle. On the Thai side, it’s a tight run of the classics: mango sticky rice, pad thai, khao soi, pad grapao. Nothing you haven’t seen on a hundred menus across the country, but executed with the kind of care that reminds you why these dishes earned their ubiquity in the first place. The khao soi is particularly worth ordering, rich without being cloying, and complex in its dry-spicing. On the Western side, the register is more club-sandwich-and-chips than fine dining: caesar salad, a cheeseburger, a margherita pizza, a roast chicken. Comfort food for when you do not want to think, and all the better for not trying to be anything else.

The main lodge has a bar, and is a lovely space to spend time in the evening, when a fire is lit, a musician plays traditional Thai instruments, and guests drift in for a drink and a game of chess under lamplight. The conversation is lively, dovetailing with the crickets, neither competing, both complementing.

If you’re keen to surrender the shade of the palms, then you’ll be pleased to hear that you’ll be well fed through the wider Twinpalms dining network. Breakfast is served at Catch Beach Club, a glamorous beachfront venue overlooking the ocean with a part-buffet, part-à-la-carte setup. It’s one hell of a view.

Catch takes on different guises throughout the day. “Start slow, stay for sunset, end up dancing” is their tagline, but that rather downplays the depth and breadth of the food on offer. Food spans the globe. Since you’re here, a Phuket rock lobster salad is a good shout – served with tzatziki, cherry tomatoes and a lemon sauce. The blue swimmer crab salad with mango and tobiko roe and asparagus sounds like an ambitious combination, but works well.

The Friday seafood barbecue is another proposition entirely, befitting of a beach club in the pursuit of being a decadent destination. A step up from the standard hotel buffet, and then some. Unlimited crabs and oysters, sushi rolled to order, an Australian ribeye carving station, a whole chicken rotisserie turning slowly in the corner. A pasta station dishing up made-to-order plates: squid-ink fettuccine, osso bucco, a slow-cooked beef ragù rich enough to stand up in dining rooms several rungs more formal than this one. Proper, grown-up cooking, served on a beach. It draws a crowd, and deservedly.

There is a fire show on buffet nights too, and before you roll your eyes and shield your eyebrows, this one is a cut above. Your standard beach-resort fire twirler typically performs a few competent spins with a flaming staff before retreating. Catch has other ideas. The choreography is tighter, the scale bigger, and the finale sees the Catch logo itself emblazoned in flame on the sand. It is the sort of thing that could feel naff and somehow doesn’t, carried through on the sheer conviction of it all.

Oriental Spoon and Wagyu Steakhouse, the group’s restaurants at the flagship Twinpalms Surin resort, are another option, along with Shimmer on Kamala Beach. A shuttle runs between all venues, though it isn’t strictly necessary as Catch and Lazy Coconut are a short walk along the sand.

Lazy Coconut is a real sand-between-your-toes type of place, the pick of the bunch. If you want to get straight to the beach with snacks and drinks, come here. We went for a grilled fish and a som tam platter, and it was generously spiced and then some. Thai spicy all the way, just as it should be. Do be warned that due to the open-air nature of the setup, it gets rather hot in the shacks. You’ll want to bring a portable fan to help beat the heat, or use what god gave you (the sea) for intermittent bouts of cooling off.

Ideal For…

With its lagoon stillness, beautifully realised tents and access to the wider Twinpalms network, the camp fills a gap for adults-only travellers who want the romance of canvas without the compromises that usually come with it. Whether you’re here for a few nights or a longer stay, it works as both a retreat and a base.

Anyone in need of a proper digital detox. The absence of a television, the gentle encouragement away from screens, and the sheer pull of the daybed, plunge pool & lagoon all conspire to get the phone out of your hand.

Romantics and honeymooners. Adults-only, candlelit, with in-tent massages, a plunge pool a few steps from the bed, a safari-style tent that feels lifted from another era, and a lagoon that turns gold at sundown. Few places on Phuket’s west coast handle romance like this.

Couples who disagree about holidays. One wants the beach club, the other wants silence. The camp splits the difference cleanly: lively Bang Tao is a few minutes away, the lagoon tents are a world apart. The best of both worlds.

Writers and readers. The director’s chair, the brass lamp, the daybed: it’s a room that gently asks what you’re going to do with the day. Bring the manuscript, the sketchbook, the half-read stack.

It’s perhaps less suited to families with children (as it’s adults-only), to also those who want a full-service resort with a concierge, a kids’ club and multiple on-site restaurants, or light sleepers booking a beachfront tent unaware that Catch Beach Club will be part of the soundtrack until midnight.

Why Stay?

Despite its proximity to one of Phuket’s liveliest beach strips, there’s a stillness to Twinpalms Tented Camp that is genuinely hard to find on the island’s west coast. The tents are a feat of careful, considered design, the service is exceptional without being showy, and the Twinpalms network around it takes care of everything the camp deliberately does without. Come for the romance of canvas and brass; stay for the fact that it’s backed up by a group that knows how to run a hotel properly.

Tents at Twinpalms Tented Camp start from 12,000 THB (around £275) per night in low season (April to October), rising to 20,000 THB (around £460) in high season (November to March).

Address: 202 88, Choeng Thale, Thalang District, Phuket

Website: twinpalmshotelsresorts.com/tented-camp-phuket

If you are heading to Phuket and food is high on the agenda, our guide to where to eat in Phuket Old Town is well worth a read before you go.