Batgung

Summer holidays have become much more important in the past couple of years for the Tall family, as Daughter Tall’s availability is now constrained by her kindergarten’s schedule. So although I’ve always been a travel fan, and enjoy trip planning as part of the experience, the stakes have been raised. Fortunately, as I’ve mentioned, Hong Kong is an excellent base from which to travel all around Asia. And since we Talls have just completed one of our favorite kinds of holidays – a trip to a southeast Asian beach resort – I thought I would pass along a few tips and experiences I’ve found helpful in getting the most out of beach holidays.

Now, some of you may be like MrB and family – you’ve found a resort that perfectly fits your requirements, so you’re content to stay there every time you want to hit the beach. This certainly cuts down on trip planning stress! But alas, it’s not the case for the Talls. I would be happy to revisit a small rotation of places I liked from my early Asian travels, but Mrs Tall craves variety, so we’ve tried out lots more places over the years. All told, I’ve been to Phuket, Koh Samui and Koh Samet in Thailand; Pulau Tioman, Penang/Georgetown, Kota Kinabalu and Langkawi (our most recent trip’s destination) in Malaysia; Hainan Island in China; and Bintan Island in Indonesia (actually just a short ferry ride from Singapore). I’ve also stayed at just about the full range of beach accommodation, from decrepit shacks with shared toilets to five-star-plus resorts.

When Mrs Tall and I planned a beach trip in the past, we just triangulated three factors: flight/hotel package offers from HK travel agents (these usually get you pretty good prices); reviews from travel guidebooks; and whatever word of mouth we had heard. Deciding which resort to book didn’t take long: we just lined up the costs, then picked a suitably-priced resort that got a decent guidebook review, or that someone had put in a good word for.

Usually this worked out all right, but we had a few disappointments, too. For example, when we visited Kota Kinabalu, we booked a Shangri-la resort. Those of you living in Asia surely know the name, and its high reputation. We were all geared up for a great stay, but it turned out that – like Hong Kong – KK has two Shangri-las. One has a big beach – and I adore beaches – but the other is much closer to the city and has only a man-made beach. Guess which one we ended up at? Ah, well . . . .

With the Internet, there’s now no excuse for such oversights. These days I use a combination of resorts’ own websites plus reviews from TripAdvisor.com to try to divine what places are really like. If you don’t already use the incredible resources TripAdvisor provides, allow me to strongly recommend that you do. I’ve used quite a few travel sites – Fodors, Epinion’s travel section, Yahoo Travel, etc. – but I like TripAdvisor best. It often provides hundreds of reviews for popular hotels, building up informative profiles no single writer could ever equal.

But I’ve also found TripAdvisor has its own pitfalls, so here are a couple of tips when using it to find a good Asian beach resort:

Pay attention to the numerical ratings. If, that is, the resort you’re looking at has been reviewed enough times to make these average ratings meaningful. I usually start to consider them if there are, say, at least 20 reviews or so. When there are lots of reviews – for example, the resort we ended up booking in Langkawi had well over 200 – I take them that much more seriously.

Make sure you have a look at both sets of photos most TripAdvisor resort reviews provide. One set comes from the resort’s own publicity department, so these photos usually shimmer with luxury and natural splendor. But then take a look at the candid photos provided by reviewers themselves. If you notice a huge disparity between the two, beware!

Read more than just the most recent reviews. TripAdvisor default review pages show only the five most recent reviews. This sample size is too small to be meaningful. I therefore usually read the ten or so most recent reviews first, then sort the reviews according to the ‘User rating: lowest’ and ‘User rating: highest’ as well, each time reading at least another five or ten.

Why go to all of this trouble? Well, I’ve found that beach resorts are subject to wildly varying reviews.

On the high end, you’ve got the young couples, let’s say Jessica and Jason from the UK, who’re making their first trip to Asia. Jessica’s review will gush with praise; staying at their resort is ‘a must’, taking every local tour they took is ‘a must’, sampling all the exotic foods they ingested without undue intestinal distress is ‘a must’ – well, you get the picture.

On the other hand, the lowest resort reviews are often written by men, and usually fall into one of two categories. Either Mr Dissatisfied feels that he’s ‘spent all that money for a luxury holiday for my precious family only to find that the resort’s rooms/pool/bar/buffet breakfast (my own obsession, I’ll freely admit)/local transport arrangements are unacceptable/overpriced/inconvenient/just not what he expected’; or some member of the resort staff was rude to him/didn’t understand proper English/was observed openly goofing off instead of rushing over and asking him ‘Please, Sir, may I provide you with another frosty Carlsberg immediately, Sir, please?’.

Obviously, neither of these types of reviews should be taken all that seriously. But reading reviews from both ends of the spectrum will usually alert you to a resort’s genuine good points – and its failings.

And all resorts have failings, don’t they? No matter how powdery the beach, no matter how attentive-but-unobtrusive the staff, no matter how exquisitely prepared the Bircher muesli at breakfast (there I go again . . . ), there’ll always be a fly somewhere in the ointment. And the more you pay, the more eagle-eyed you’ll be in spotting them. Even the very nicest resort we’ve ever stayed in – the Banyan Tree in Phuket – isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have direct beach access: you have to take a little golf cart, or walk for five minutes or so. If that’s not asking a lot of a guest, I don’t know what is!

Seriously, though – how do you avoid being disappointed when you’re paying quite a bit for a resort holiday? I’ve decided it comes down to making several fundamental choices:

Beach vs. pool. Now, before you start spluttering ‘hey, this is not a mutually exclusive category!’, bear with me. I’ve noticed that many – not all, but many – resort websites feature prominently either their fabulous pool, or their stunning beach, but not often both. If you have strong preferences about these watery resources, I’d suggest examining all available sources to see what they’re really like at the resorts you’re checking out. Most resorts of course provide both, but sometimes even very high-end establishments don’t have great beach access, for example. And there’s are a couple of good reasons for this, which we’ll get to next . . .

‘Best beach’ vs. newer/bigger/better resort. In many Asian beach areas, for obvious reasons, the most beautiful beaches were developed earliest. Koh Samui is a good example. Chaweng Beach, which is truly lovely, was the epicenter of the island’s first wave of tourism development. We stayed there a couple of years ago, and it’s great – except that the entire beach is fronted by a seemingly endless string of beach hut complexes mixed in with smallish resort hotels. The one we stayed in was nice, but it wasn’t big enough to support the kinds of amenities many of us enjoy, e.g. multiple restaurants, a big pool or pools, a gym/sports facilities, a spa, and so on. Samui has bigger resorts, but they were built later, at less impressive beaches. This pattern is repeated in numerous places around Asia: famous beach = lots of small places; newer, more luxurious resort = secondary locations, often chosen for their remoteness. Again, there are of course exceptions, but it’s often a choice you’ll need to make.

‘Exclusive’ vs. ‘convenient’. Here’s a good culture-clash category that’s closely related to my previous point. When many of us westerners dream about beach holidays, we see ourselves walking hand-in-hand with Mrs Tall (at least I do), down a softly surf-washed beach at sunset, with noooooo one else in sight . . . . (Daughter Tall must be back in the room watching Monkey King episodes.) But Mrs Tall doesn’t like truly isolated resorts, no matter how picturesque and ‘exclusive’ they market themselves to be. Why not? First, she (and I, too) resent being part of a captive market for food and transport. We’ve stayed at a couple of places that really were remote, and we quickly tired of paying way-over-the-top prices for unremarkable – even bad – food. Also, Mrs Tall again likes the variety of restaurants and shops available at beach areas with at least several resorts – she likes a least a bit of ‘buzz’ that doesn’t require a long taxi or minibus ride to get to.

Cost vs. luxury. Making this choice is unavoidable. Although Asian beach resorts in general are excellent value, there’s still a point at which most of us must say ‘enough is enough’. The problem is, once you’re stayed at a very good place, it can be hard to resign yourself to dropping back down the luxury ladder. If you are making a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip, e.g. a honeymoon or big anniversary, I’d say go crazy, because you’ll likely get good value and fond memories. But if you’re going on ordinary holidays like the Talls, you have to rein in your ambitions most of the time, and settle for less. Keep in mind what you’re really looking for: if it’s the beach, sun and sea you’re after, remember that often the best of these aren’t dominated by the ‘best’ resorts, so you should have plenty of good mid-range options. If you must have absolute top-end service, though, you’re going to pay for it no matter what the location.

Whew! I’d better wrap up. I think my days of lazing on the beach last week left me far too primed for expounding on this subject.

Readers, what are your favorite resorts/tips for enjoying the beach?