My wife and I will fly to Hong Kong or Hanoi for a vacation, roughly Dec. 7-21, this year. (It's the return flight of a RT ticket, so we can get off in HKG or continue on to HAN). Even after perusing some relevant threads here, I don't have a great grasp of Marriott options that are fairly accessible by one or two flights (say, transiting through Bangkoki) from one or the other of those cities. That mainly means SE Asia, though we'd be open to other options.

By way of background, we've been to every SE Asian nation (Thailand several times) except Brunei and I've visited most of them for work, so we have some sense of the region. We've also been to China and Taiwan recently, so don't want to go back so soon (though we of course realize there's much more to see in both). Plus we want a warm or tropical climate for this trip - hence our not focusing on northern Vietnam in December, even though we could fly right there.

All that said, I'd very much welcome recommendations that tick one or preferably more of these boxes:

1. If it's a beach resort, a hotel from which you can walk to nearby local restaurants and massage shacks, preferably on the beach itself.
2. A long, beautiful beach to walk along in the morning or evening.
(For any folks familiar with it, a number of years ago we stayed at Starwood's Le Meridien Khao Lak property - which since departed the chain - and loved it partly for #1 and 2).
3. Good platinum treatment, with a good chance of upgrades.
4. Whether a beach hotel or another property, a place that might have unusual features or might be in an unusual location. By way of illustration, we loved the Andaman Langkawi partly because of all of the wildlife in the area and the guided and unguided walks we could take through the forest that runs right up to the sea there.
5. For non-beach resorts, an interesting city, town or location to explore. We loved Luang Prabang, so it comes to mind as an example of this, though I know it's a very unusual place (and no Marriotts there in any event).
6. A place where we can mainly stay on points or on cash + points, though we're not averse to spending up to, say $200/night if those options aren't available.
7. We have decent points balances totaling about 700,000, but certainly wouldn't be averse to good places that aren't necessarily top category hotels.
8. The smaller the hotel, the better.
9. Divide our time between two or three stops.
10. The trip doesn't have to be all Marriott, so we'd also be very open to suggestions at other chains (FWIW, I'm also Hilton Diamond) or at non-chain hotels . But both to save $$ and take advantage of my status and the nice Marriott properties, we'd prefer at least half the nights to be Marriott and/or otherwise points-friendly.

Again, I realize that no one place fits the bill, but would appreciate any advice. Thanks.