azepine00

+1. I was facing the same decision making (only with younger kids) and i decided to come back to LMKL but that was prior to it going up one category. Booked a suite directly with points to address space and breakfast issues (gold); perhaps i can get an upsell to a villa.
There are interesting places to explore nearby (even more so with teenagers) and you can rent a car and explore at will. CKS will pretty much chain you to very expensive resort and getting there is rather expensive.
I'll burn HH points elsewhere, most likely FP.

Land-of-Miles

I don't quite get why the CKS chains you to the resort but the LMKL doesn't. I think you really need a car in both places but you have a lot more things to do or alternative places to eat/drink etc. within a short drive in Samui. You also have a lot of options at the IC next doorish in Samui when there is nothing comparable next door at the LMKL.

I get where Thunderroad is coming from now given his stated preferences. I am not that much of a beach hut dining, beach massage kind of guy and broadly prefer the pool to the beach (except to look out over) so I get why our perspectives differ. Given stated preferences I would suggest some other properties which might have some similar attributes but obviously will not quite be the same as LMKL. I would first pop into the JW Marriott in Phuket perhaps next time you are en-route from HKT to LMKL which also sits on a relatively long undeveloped beach with some off property local amenities and even a turtle sanctuary. A very different long but relatively undeveloped beach can be found around the Westin Macau, a property which is a long way from perfect but is often very cheap and which we have enjoyed over many albeit shorter stays. Otherwise getting a little more off the beaten track to places like Koh Chang or Lanta may tick your boxes or somewhere down south like Chumpon may offer what you are looking for without reverting to beach bungalow style accommodation.

ExpatSomchai

Due to the remote location a good bar wouldn't go a miss here with reasonable prices.

Thunderroad

Wow, good for you! You must have done something wonderful in this or some previous life to get this treatment. Or, do you think perhaps they moved you because the hotel was full, they needed the standard rooms you were in, and your staying on for just another three days fit nicely with their room/villa allocations?

Anyway, thanks for the info on this.

Thanks for this very interesting info, LoM. I lack Marriott status but it's good to be award of that option. I feel somewhat chained to the hotel chains where I can use awards or C+P -talk about self-imposed First World problems! - though with the gradual devaluation of such programs the non-chain options become more competitive and I should keep in mind the Thailand locations you mentioned.

As for Westin Macau, that never would have crossed my radar screen, so thanks for mentioning it. I could see tacking that on to an eventual China or perhaps other regional vacation, as we'd always been interested in checking out Macau but might prefer a non-hectic base for doing so (even if it meant some shuttling and taxis). FYI, it could be that the long-overdue renovations are in the works. This from a Dec. 13, 2012 management response to a review at Tripadvisor: "I am happy to share with you that we are currently preparing for a comprehensive plan for future upgrade."

DXBPlat

Just back from an 8 night stay in Khao Lak, enjoyed it immensely. Lots of chat on here about the pros and cons, but quite frankly even with the recent uplift in Cash and Points (now 5k +$75) I'd still say this is fantastic value - we luckily got it at the highway robbery rate (for us) of 2.8k + $45k.

We arrived just before Easter weekend and had seen it fully sold out for about 10 days in advance so SNA's couldn't be honoured. Managed to get advanced notice of 4 nights in Deluxe room as booked and then 4 nights in a Lagoon Villa - all 8 SNAs were recredited to my account (note: I think if we'd pushed we could have got an extra night or 2 upgraded but I have no grudge of the hotel looking for a bit of extra revenue over Easter given they made what I saw as a fair deal).

Deluxe rooms were actually pretty good, we got 3rd floor overlooking the spa pool and it was very peaceful, a large room (by Western standards anyway) and easily accommodated the 3 of us (2A+1C). The Lagoon Villa was fantastic though, although they look a little dated from the outside the inside are very well finished and have an extra large bathroom + outdoor shower area. Overall, very impressed with the rooms.

A long list of pros for this resort:

- Very good Platinum treatment including a daily happy hour at the beach bar (pretty much a full bar menu including beers, wines, cocktails and soft drinks - plus free canapes) and a choice of breakfast at 2 restaurants. Both breakfasts have their positives, Baan Thai has some fantastic a la carte options and a lovely setting, the main Cafe has a wide choice and is better for those looking to get in and out quickly

- Your24 accepted (admittedly I had to reconfirm the day before I left but after a pleasant discussion and a quick phone call they were fine with it)

- Lovely grounds and pools and plenty of choice of sunlougers. We'd gone with very much a view of the holiday being about relaxation and we weren't disappointed. Even though it's a sizeable hotel, it rarely feels busy and the large pools would rarely have more than 10 people in them at one time. Most people preferred the beach to the pools admittedly

- Excellent kids club staff and facilities, a good list of activities (most are arts/ crafts/ outdoor activities but they also have time-limited TV and playstation time for those kids looking for a quick fix). Staff took great care of my daughter.

- Great list of activities for residents...if anything I'd say they underpromote this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to have Club-Med-style aerobics in the pool, but the daily activities that are available were of high quality but often undersubscribed (e.g. bike rides, archery, yoga etc)

- My wife and daughter greatly enjoyed the spa facilities. Prices may be more than the beach hut down the road...but then again not everyone wants a treatment in the 35 degree open-air

- Namwaan the elephant is 3 hours of child entertainment on her own! Very cute and would also say seems very well treated and enjoys her time swimming and destroying sandcastles for the guests!

- Good choice of food and restaurants overall, although I would say that they are often very quiet. Kids Pass is worth it for anyone, it's 300 Baht (c. $10) and pays for itself before breakfast is done.

- Nice staff and a very positive attitude. It's quite well run from a management perspective (putting my business hat on here) so you get familiar with the staff as they rotate through the resort...it's not that unusual to have the same person serve you food for breakfast, lunch and dinner in 3 different restaurants!

I do have a few gripes and they pick up on the theme of service. Now, as above, I liked the staff and they are very positive in what they do, but sometimes a few things just go a bit awry. I won't bore with too many details, but generally it relates to communication mix ups and occasional slow service (e.g. order a glass of wine as food arrives...the wine arrives after all plates have been cleared after eating). To be fair, managers do step in and sort out issues if you highlight them. That said, maybe I've just stayed in too many hotels and should just be more aligned to a slower non-business life when I'm on my holidays!

To summarise, highly recommend this hotel and very much hoping to return next year. It's a perfect place for a relaxing holiday and fantastic value within the SPG program.

TDCumm16

DXB very good trip report!


I'll also add to this thread that DW & I recently returned from a trip through Thailand that included 5 nights at the LMKL and absolutely loved it. We were a bit nervous about our LMKL stay due to some of less than stellar reviews here & on tripadvisor, but all of our worries were unwarranted.

We had great fortune in that our SNAs were denied and returned to our account, but we were granted a platinum upgrade at checkin to a Lagoon Villa (thank you to my ambassador if she had anything to do with that). Loved the Lagoon Villa - we were in #60 right next to the pool - very spacious, modern on the inside, and I really enjoyed the outdoor shower.

I felt very well recognized as a platinum. Breakfasts were great at both the Ban Thai & the larger cafe (forget the name). We really felt the happy hour was a great value - a perfect way to start the evening with drinks while watching the sunset.

Grounds of the hotel were gorgeous and we loved the location on the beach. We enjoyed walking up & down the beaches and eating at all the small beach restaurants. Definitely became a fan of the Thai massages at the beach locations - can't beat the prices & views.

I thought the staff was very good. We also spent a few nights at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit in Bangkok - as a reference the staff at the Sheraton Grande did provide a more traditional higher level of service & attentiveness versus the LMKL had more of a 'resort' vibe to their service. Again, absolutely no complaints from our end, but after spending time in Thailand I do think I understand where some of the reviews come from. I also found being a bit more forward with the staff at the LMKL was helpful (for example I thought they were a bit passive compared to Western standards and if you wanted something like another drink you were better off just asking than waiting for them to ask you).

Would not hesitate to recommend to others and would gladly stay again if our travels take us to Thailand.

soy

I think we were moved due to oversell as the hotel was totally sold out all week. I suspect that the fact that we were leaving on the Saturday also helped as they had a wedding on the Sat and it would not surprise me if the villa was booked that night.
Probably helped that it seemed to be plat lite while we were there, at least based on the happy hour attendance. Only ever saw two other tables populated.

MisterSelfish

Stayed here back in March on points immediately after staying at the CKS. It's a nice hotel, though a little big for my liking. As a gold member here's what we experienced:

* Upgrade to a slightly better room
* Free drink card for the two nights we were there (we only took advantage of the first night)
* Gift of snacks & points

The main negative is how far away the property is from town. They have a "complimentary" shuttle that costs 60 baht pp per direction, but it only runs at night. We enjoyed being holed up at the CKS, but less so at the LMKL which felt like a slightly better Hyatt Bali, minus the grounds.

On the positive, they have a frickin' baby elephant!

Koh Lak ain't much to write home about - more tourists than Thai. Koh Sak is nearby, which is worth a trip if you like hiking and a faux Halong Bay type experience. We came here mostly to dive at Richilieu Rock, which was amazing - but slightly dangerous and definitely overpriced.

Here's my full review for anyone that's interested: http://theselfishyears.com/2013/03/3...s-in-khao-lak/

Gamecock

What else can you ask for!?!

remymartin

Dear Sacran,


Any update on the car rental service?

RetiredRoadWarrior

The baby elephant is way cool!! ^^^

Dark-Sider

Hi,

My wife and I just came back from a two and a half week honeymoon in Thailand. We stayed 14 Days at the LMKL and the remaining days in the Royal Orchid Sheraton in Bangkok (which I can also recommend).

Since this is the LMKL thread I'm not going to dive into the Sheraton experience in Bangkok.

Since I'm just a SPG member but don't have any Plat/Gold status I didn't expect any of those special perks.

I booked the vacation via a German tour operator. The booked room category was the Premium Oceanfront Villa - we got Villa A1.

Upon arrival we were heartly greeted and got a delicious cup of iced welcome tea. Our luggage was being taken care of and we were introduced to our villa host. This is apperently your primary point of contact if you have any questions, troubles, reservations etc.

Our villa host drove us with a "golf-cart" to our villa and explained pretty much everything. Plenty of bottled drinking water is free and daily refilled. There is also a small milk-package in the fridge which is also free and should be daily refilled (more on that later).

The villa itself is really spacious, the private pool is maybe a little small, but well just a few steps accross the beach you have the world's biggest pool called ocean :-). There is plenty of wardrobe space in the villa - like three wardrobe doors on each side of the villa. The both larger wardrobes are also illuminated. You can open the wardrobe also from within the bathroom which is kind of neat. Also there are plenty of drawers and other places to put your stuff.

As for entertainment they have a large LED-TV from Samsung in the villa. Below the TV they have a 2.1 sound system from Denon which unfortunately was not connected to the TV and also had no iPod/iPhone dock. You are able to use stereo or cinch jacks to connect your devices to the Denon Sound System. As for the TV it has USB, HDMI etc.

The air condition within the room was a bit noisy but not as much that I felt the need to complain about it. If put the fan on setting 1 or 2 it was ok-ish.

The bathroom is nice. It hase one huge bathtub, a quite large indoor shower, a toilet and of course two washbasins (which are not next to each other). Through the bathroom and the indoor-shower you step into the outdoor shower which is a really big rain-shower. Our's was not working porpperly sind water sprayed in all dirctions but not down :-). I reported it and did not complain about it since we felt no need to use the outdoor shower.

There is very good WiFi coverage within our villa and there is also a LAN port for a cabled connection which I prefer. When I hooked up (logged in via room number and last name) it said complimentary free internet access. Don't know if this is normal for the premium villas - normally they apperently charge THB470 for 24hrs of access which is just rediculous high. The internet speed is really really slow. I got like 0.5Mbit/s with high latency to Germany. Working with a SSH-shell was quite painful but manageable. The speed is everywhere the same (lobby with free access, room cabled, room wifi). At Khao Lak Center a saw an advertisement sign for 10-100Mbit/s FTTH. The hotel should think about buying one (or two) of these...

After all we were there to enjoy the sun the pools and the beach. The outdoor area of the villa is great. You have two pool sun loungers and a table with two chairs at the pool. Next to the pool is also the daybed which also provides good shadow. At the beachfront there are two more sun loungers facing the oceanfront and another table with two chairs. Then there is also a half-roofed beach chair which we didn't use too much.

Our room and the garden with the pool were always perfectly cleaned! Each morning and during the day someone came by and picked up fallen down leafs etc. There was no dirt in our room it felt very hygenic.

The roomservice itself comes twice - during the day to clean the room and around 6pm for the turndown service. The turndown is way to early for my taste, since 6 is our time for having a shower and getting ready for dinner. The turndown service slips you a note to call "service" when / if they should come again. We mostly decdid to close the curtains ourselves since that was apprently everything turndown service does.

Around 2:30pm the Villa host brings by a bowl of daily fruit - which is a nice and refreshing snack.

The locking mechanism of our garden door (to the pool) was broken when we arrived and never could have worked! Since those villas are older than a year I wondered why no one ever had reported this. It was fixed the following two days which was faster than expected. They even needed to bring in an external "specialist". I always wonder why 5 star hotels can not have doors and windwos that are up to central european standards... So I had to improvise for two nights to keep the doors shut at night. I took a longer USB-cable and wrapped it around the two door handles - look there I fixed it :-)

When we arrived there were 4 pool towels on our daybed and 2 on a stool inside the villa next to the garden door. You need two towels to put them on the sun loungers facing the ocean (which is was done each morning by the hotel staff) You need towels (one each person) to dry yourself after coming from the beach / the pool. The other two towels inside the room would have been nice if all others are wet but they got never "replaced". Actually the day after the arrival there were only two towels on the daybed and none elsewhere - the following days we received 2-4 towels each day which I called the towel lottery. I told our villa host and he explaind that there is a towel shortag (...!) but he would make sure that we would get 4 each day. Which we then did.

The towels for the use within the bathroom were daily changed and there were always plenty but two days somehow in wrong sizes :-) no big deal happens everywhere.

For the first 6 days the free milk in our room was not refilled, we complained 4 times about this. Our villa host then brought us a full six pack of milk and thereafter the roomservice refilled the milk everyday. Problem solved no big deal since only my wife drinks milk

We only had breakfast which was rich and plentyful. As (premium?) villa guest
you have the choice of eating hat the buffet restaurant (lillawadee) or take the a la carte breakfast at the ban thai restaurant. Ban thai got the more relaxing sourrounding to it. You also get some food that they don't serve at the buffet like a nice breakfast steak but it's a little inconvenient to order pretty much everything a la cart. They hand you the menu once you arrive you pick your order and the take it from you. They would probably bring you the menu again if you asked for it, you can also order stuff not on the menu but I think it's way easier to have a big buffet. Ban thai also has a small buffet with some sparkling wine, juices, meat, chease, cerials, cake, muffins, nuts and fruits etc.

The buffet at lillawadee is big but with only little changes among the days. food-quality is great - have you ever had omelette with chillis? no? try it! The also serve traditional thai food at breakfast what is common in thailand. Otherwise the buffet is what you would expect from a big american breakfast buffet. For the fruits - they mostly have pineapple, water melon, jack fruit, dragon fruit, grapes, papaya and sometimes some other melons and rose apples. I missed lychess and mangos. You can order mangos in bothe lillawadee and ban thai and they bring you a nice cut half mango to your table if they are available. We tried to order one 8 times and succeeded 3 times. This is really quite a shame. I don't know what's the problem with mangos - are all of them exported? Are they that expensive in Thailand? Is there no demand among the guests?

They have big glasses for juice and water which is a huge plus! And they offer every day different kind of smoothie (coconut, greentea, strawberry etc...)

Aside from these minor issues we had a very pleasant and relaxing stay at the LMKL! The hotel staff is very very friendly and they try their very best to make you happy!

As for the baby elephant - I'm not a big fan of animals being held "captive" and taken from their herd for the joy of others. Why someone would need an elephant which plays soccer on the beach I don't know but well maybe he's better off at the LMKL than those elephants used for elephant jungle trecking...

As for the excursions - we did the phang nga bay trip, the khao sok national park trip and the snorkling at similan islands.

We booked all trips at the family restaurant next to the hotel's gate as they were a lot cheaper than offered by the hotel or our tour operator.
For the similan tour our tour operator charges TBH 3.700 the hotel charges TBH 2.700 and Mr. A. at family offers the same tour for TBH 1.800... Since we met some couples from our hotel which were picked up by the same mini vans as we were and ended up on the same boats eating the same food - be aware not to pay too much.

Similan and phang nga including the james bond rock were beautiful tours. The khao sok tour was very disappointing - maybe I had the wrong expectations of a national park. I don't know why everybody says that khao sok is the most booked and best received tour among guests.

As for dining: The hotel offers very nice restaurants at prices that are reasonable to ok. After all this resort is in the 5 star category - so don't expect food for TBH 180 ($6) and a coke for TBH 30 ($1).

You have the opportunity of dining in one of the plenty beach huts. The food is quite good and very cheap. From TBH 80 to TBH 180 for let's say red curry with chicken - depending on which hut you chose. Some are closer by (5-10 min walk) others are further away (15-20 min walk). Be sure to use mosquito repellent and be prepared to be stung anyway.

You also can take the shuttle bus to khao lak center - which is a 15 min ride and costs TBH100 for the single trip and TBH200 for a roundtrip (which is reasonable IMO). Across from the shuttle stop there is restaurant "9" which we can recommend very much! A dinner for two costs you ~TBH500-600. There are less mosquitos within KL center and the restaurants are more like restaurants with wooden chairs and tables and not "shady" beach huts with plastic chairs.

Hopefully this is some helpful information for someone and enjoy your stay at the LMKL!

bye,
Darky

freeloader

^ really helpful and detailed first post Dark-Sider!

looking forward to more of your posts in the future!!

RetiredRoadWarrior

To echo freeloader . . . a great review dark-sider and welcome to FT.

(Anyone who prowls through this entire thread will see that I am a huge fan of LMKL)

nittany987

Very excited to log some time here in a couple of months. Have booked the Deluxe Oceanfront one-bedroom villa with the bigger pool for ~330 USD a night, which seems like a slam dunk to me. Anyone have any reason to believe that this isn't worth it? Going to be with my fiance, and would like plenty of space to lounge around, enjoy cigars and not see too many other folks.

FWIW, we'll be coming from the CKS, but understand that we should adjust expectations a bit.