Amanoi

In many ways, we found Amanoi to be the opposite of the Six Senses. Here, the service was very nearly perfect, already much better than that at the Six Senses. Unlike the Six Senses, English was still a ‘work in progress’ for many employees, but you could really see them trying to learn and still attempting to communicate with the guests. But you could tell that even though not everyone spoke perfect English, they had really gotten the Aman service vibe down. Unlike at the Six Senses, management was always present and always engaging. We felt honestly welcomed here and that the employees really loved (and were proud of) their jobs.

Amanoi is not a beach resort. I know others will disagree, but in my opinion, one should not go there for the beach. We found it small and rather unpleasant to be on (although lovely to look at). The beach and (even worse) the water were both filled with trash, even though there was an employee cleaning up the beach constantly. I think that one of the things that makes the resort ‘special’ - seeing all of the fishing boats at night, also makes it unusable as a beach resort. Because the fishermen tend to toss their trash overboard and all of that trash washes into the Amanoi beach and floats around in the water. If I want to swim with trash, I will go to my local community pool (Ha!). Here it was just unpleasant and we avoided it after wading in and having trash bags stuck to our bodies. Plus, I found the view from the beach (of the piers that the fishermen use) to be somewhat industrial and unappealing.

It’s clear that the construction and materials here are top notch - clearly better than the Six Senses. And this place is about as far from rustic as you can get. That said, although both the common areas and the villas were very ‘wow’ and I could see that they were going for a specific look (and they certainly achieved that), I found the indoor areas of the resort (both common and villa) to be rather dark. Not a huge deal and after being out in the bright sun, sometimes it’s nice to be in a shady place. The interior space of the villas was well designed. We loved the bathroom and the indoor/outdoor shower and were not really bothered by the TV. The bed was wonderful, but the couch in the room was so uncomfortable that it was really unusable.

Housekeeping was excellent – always in when we were not and we never saw them. Given the heat and the size of the resort, we used a lot of buggies and they were always there before we were ready. Literally, we’d call and by the time we put on our shoes and walked from the villa to the main path, they were waiting.

I do have to agree that the cliff pool here is pretty amazing. The beach pool also looks wonderful, but the water was always too hot for us, so we really didn’t use it much.

One issue we had was with both the villa pool and the pool at the beach club - specifically, that by the afternoon, they were just too hot to use. The only pool that seems to be immune to this is the cliff pool. The resort owners need to invest some money into both heating and cooling the pools (obviously, at different times of the year).

Food here was fantastic - actually, much better than at the Six Senses. And again, I thought it was very reasonably priced. Others have said the spa was mediocre, but we found it quite nice and the treatments were excellent. The spa manager was newly arrived from one of the Amans in India and was doing an excellent job.