Shiva Samui Luxury Villas in Lamai Beach

It's very touristy. Almost felt like I wasn't in Thailand. If you just want to be at a nice beach with swimming pools. You will probably enjoy it. The service was great.

Stayed in the ocean view room with a shared plunge pool. Lovely to have a view of the ocean and to able to walk out onto the beach from our room.

The plunge pool was great although the guests upstairs asked us not to swim in it at certain hours as they were on a different time zone to us and were sleeping in the morning when our kids wanted to swim.

I didn’t find the staff friendly.

The place felt like it didn’t have life in it - if I found out it was closing down in the bear future I wouldn’t be surprised as it felt like it wasn’t alive. The pool bar was constantly the deserted. The kids club was a very small little area next to check in and we never took our kids to it because it looked like they would’ve just been sitting around bored.

The food was ok but overpriced, for the price charged I would’ve expected it to be organic. I would’ve liked to see more plant based options and organic healthy choices. In the end we ate all our food at a local wellness retreat.

It’s quite far away from everything so we spent around $60 AUD per day on two taxis to get to the cafe/food we wanted. If you asked the resort to book a taxi for you it was WAY more expensive than if you booked via the Grab app. Grab App was around 500 Thai Bhat to Vikasa Life Cafe whereas the hotel said they would charge us 900 Thai Bhat if they booked it.

The room was clean and nice, it was so nice to have room service tidy up each day.

There was no staff available after 9pm or 10pm.

People smoked next to the communal large pool at the beach club which is a shame when small children are swimming next to them in the pool, and also not nice to be near for any non smokers.

So it was really lovely to be staying almost on the beach in Koh Samui but it was too far from everything and I kept finding myself comparing the customer service to our stays in Bali and there was no comparison - in Bali they were so friendly and accomodating and helpful, but I didn’t find that to be the case in Thailand, at least not at Shiva Samui. Now that I’m home in Australia I find myself delighted at how friendly customer service is here upon returning.

Grateful for the holiday but not somewhere we desire to return to.