Hayman Island Great Barrier Reef Australia

A private and exclusive island off the coast of Queensland is making waves as the top boutique 5 star resort island destination in the Great Barrier Reef.

Already a member of the Leading Hotels of the World, the Great Barrier Feet Hayman Island hotel resort retreat in Australia is known for its tranquil boutique accommodations, natural beauty and unmatched hospitality.One of the most popular exclusive resort islands along the Queensland Australia coastline, the Great Barrier Reef Hayman Island Resort provides an impressive array of boutique 5 star accommodations, unmatch recreational activities, modern facilities and the most helpful and friendly hotel staff. Providing memorable experiences along the Reef and beautifully situated in the most pristine settings in the world, make sure that you plan your travel dream holiday to Australia with the boutique luxury Hayman Island Resort Hotel destination in mind. Laid back, relaxing and luxurious travel options are yours at the Hayman resort island in the Great Barrier Reefs. This remote and prestigious island is quite secluded but the Island Resort Hotel of Hayman Great Barrier Reef provides convenient access through sea planes, helicopters and boats from major towns and cities in Queensland. The award winning boutique 5 star Hayman Island Resort in Australia is just north of Hamilton, Whitsunday and Hook Islands off the coast of Queensland between Cairns and Brisbane. This island resort hotel at Hayman Island in Australia provides an impressive staff of five hundred and also an award winning five star boutique resort for discerning Australia vacationers and holiday goers. A tropical paradise at the Hayman Resort Island Hotel is waiting for you and your loved ones, so make you reservations today.

The boutique five star Hayman Island Resort

An all inclusive private and secluded resort island, Hayman Great Barrier Reef provides coral fringed white sand beaches and the crystal ocean blue waters of the Coral Sea. In addition to the 5 star boutique accommodations in the form of two hundred and thirty four guest suites and guestrooms, penthouses an beachfront villas, the Hayman Island Resort in Australia provides fine dining restaurants, marine facilities and activities, adventure tour packages and tranquil and peaceful lounge areas for hotel guests to enjoy the scenic beauty and pristine environment that the Hayman Island Resort boutique accommodation guestrooms are known for. Year round tropical warm weather is one of the great features of staying a the island resort five star boutique hotel at Hayman in the Great Barrier Reef with July being the coolest month (around twenty three degrees celcius or seventy seven degrees Fahrenheit). The Island of Hayman resort is two hundred and ninety four hectares in size and rises almost eight hundred and twenty feet high. The Hayman Island Resort and boutique guest suites are located on the southern cost that is surrounded by fourteen hectares of lush tropical rainforests and the most untouched white sandy beaches in the Great Barrier Reef islands. Lots of corals and marine live remain unspoiled and the boutique 5 star Hayman Island Hotel Resort provides the greatest collection of fauna and wildlife that you will encounter in Australia.

The luxury accommodation guestrooms at the Australian 5 star Hayman Island Resort in the Great Barrier Reef

Plenty of great selection marks the Great Barrier Reef Hayman Hotel Resort that includes two hundred and thirty four beautiful rooms, suites penthouses, villas and four wings: Pool Wing which overlooks the Hayman Pool and gardens, the Palm Wing which is close to all the five star hotel facilities, the Lagoon Wing which is more towards the lagoon and tropical gardens area of the boutique hotel, in addition to the Beach Wing which has its own private Beach Villa in a tranquil and peaceful setting. The Great Barrier Reef travel Australia holiday at Hayman Island Resort provides many types of rooms and luxury suites within the beautiful garden areas, by the Hayman pool and lagoon as well as with direct access to the untouched beaches. These include the Palm, Pool, Beach Front, Retreat, and Lagoon guestrooms and suites. In addition, on the fourth level of the Lagoon Wing hotel building, the Hayman Island Resort boutique accommodations at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia features, the French, English, Lagoon, Oriental, Italian, Moroccan, Queensland, and Green Penthouse hotel suites as well as the luxurious five star Beach Villa which is actually situated on the Hayman Beach overlooking the Coral Sea.

5 Star Hotel Facilities and Services

Some of the in suite and in guestroom facilities and amenities are listed below. The Australian travel Hayman Island Resort is located along the beautiful and world famous Great Barrier Reef and the guestrooms and luxury boutique suites will all have air conditioning as well as ceiling fans, telephones, internet access, fax, television with movies and news, radio, CD player, safes, mini bar, and all the traditional toiletries and amenities that a deluxe five star hotel accommodation will provide. In addition, hotel guests at the Australia Hayman Island Resort Hotel in the Great Barrier Reef will also have seven day laundry and twenty four hour room services in addition to converters if requested. A perfect location for any corporate event or conference, the Hayman Island Resort provides ample facility space for conducting large events for companies and business oriented get togethers. In addition, the pristine five star Great Barrier Reef Hotel at Hayman Island Resort in Australia is well catered towards wedding receptions and ceremonies including honeymoon packages as well. The private island destination of the Hayman Island Resort Great Barrier Reef Australia provides an exclusive health and spa experience at the Spa Chakra Hayman. Providing the most high end products, spa and massage treatments, Hayman Island hotel guests can just relax and enjoy all that the Spa Chakra Hayman has to offer.

Hotel Enquiries and booking information for the Great Barrier Reef Hayman island hotel resort in Australia

For Hayman Island Resort reservations, please call 61 2 8272 7000 or toll free within Australia at 1 800 075 175 or you can email them at reserve@hayman.com.au. For the corporate office, you can mail Great Barrier Reef Queensland 4801 Australia and for Hayman rates and booking reservations, you can go onto the Hayman web site at hayman.com.au/rates_and_bookings.php?section=enquiries&sub_section=rates_and_bookings. The deluxe five star boutique guestrooms and suites at the 5 star Great Barrier Reef Hayman Island Resort ranges between six hundred and twenty to well over four thousand five hundred AUD.

More about traveling in Thailand's newest resort destination - Koh Chang

Part 2 of 2.

Back to Basics on the island of Koh Chang

Even more untamed nature exists on the eastern side of the island of Koh Chang where there is only a handful of small hotel resorts. Most interesting to explore is an intact grove of mangroves at Ban Salak Khok, one of two fisherman’s villages that have changed little despite the swelling number of Koh Chang visitors coming to explore the area.

At Ban Salak Khok – which consists of a cluster of wooden houses built on stilts among the mangroves – fisherman mill about, mending nets or tinkering in their colourful boats whose brows are laden with strking talismans, ribbons of cloth that give protection according to Buddhist tradition as well as bundles and garlands of flowers that appease the sea and mangrove spririts. There are also kayaks for rent on this side of the Koh Chang island, in which you can spend an afternoon prowling among the mangroves, an eerie watery maze where the only sound you hear would be the splash of your oar.

A few miles south, Ban Salak Phet is another quaint fisherman’s village set on the western scoop of the large bay called Ao Salak Phet on Koh Chang. The houses in this commune are bigger, their back terraces facing the shimmering sea. Yet, few tourists to Koh Chang make it to this village (it is a 45 minute drive from Had Sai Khao) and it is possible to sit almost alone on the back terrace of the southernmost house of the village where an entrepreneurial family serves drinks.

It is a timeless spot – the endearing view revealing an azure sweep of sea, a big blue sky, and thickly forested mountains across the bay of Koh Chang Island. The silence interrupted only by the faint rustle of the breeze and water lapping the stilts underneath. A place made for reveries.

This is what makes Koh Chang so special or “cool”: luxury, nature, and solitude all contained in one small island destination in Thailand.

Where to Stay in Koh Chang – the Top Five Koh Chang Hotels

1. Amari Emerald Cove Resort and Spa

At the time of writing, the island’s only five star resort has the best service and the plushest rooms, massive dens in pastel creams and browns, full of exquisite fixtures such as handsome lampshades, masculine writing desks and wooden TV cabinets in traditional East Asian style. The grounds also hold the Koh Chang’s largest swimming pool and the best Thai restaurant. Khlong Prao, www.amari.com.

2. AANA Resort and Spa Koh Chang

A great location on a bend of the Khlong Prao river, the view is best enjoyed from the cluster of romantic igloo-style bungalows scattered in a dense tropical forest. Although on the small side, the bungalows at AANA resort are full of light, all set in whites and creams, includig minimalist cream furniture and high-pitched rattan ceiling, as well as plunge pools on the terraces. Khlong Prao, www.aanaresort.com

3. Aiyapura Resort and Koh Chang Spa

Offering a variety of styles of bungalows nestled in a secluded location, complete with attentive service, Aiyapura Resort and Spa in Koh Chang also features a great French restaurant, and lots of facilities that include all manner of watersports and tours, and a yacht available for charter. Among the Aiyapura bungalows on Koh Chang Island, the Private Pool Villas have many luxury fixtures, including an oval bathtub, large enough for two, a digital piano, and a private pool – so much so that you might forget there’s a world outside. Klong Son, www.aiyapura.com.

4. Siam Beach Resort on Koh Chang

An informal and friendly place, with open-style minimalist rooms featuring wooden floors, cement bathrooms and funky yellow walls (that are also rigged with air con and TV). Common facilities at Siam Beach Resort are limited to a small pool behind the beach, a beach bar that reverberates with dance music, and a Thai restaurant that serves fresh, plain grilled seafood on the beach Had Tha Nam, www.siambeachresort.in.th).

5. The Spa Koh Chang Resort

By a mangrove in the Koh Chang Island’s quiet east side, this place is a veritable inland retreat. Here, everything is deliberately rustic, mostly built of aged wood scavenged from farms. The bungalows at Spa koh Chang Resort which nestle in a tropical garden complete with water cascade have wooden floors, palm frond ceilings, tasteful furniture, artistic bathrooms and spacious terraces. The restaurant serves Thai staples and healthy Western food. Baan Salak Khok, www.thesparesorts.net.

Kool Koh Chang Travel - What to do in Koh Chang Thailand

Victor Paul Borg reveals the Thai Island’s rising style stakes in Fah Thai – March/April 2007 with permission on March 14, 2007. Part 1 of 2.

Thirty years ago, Konchai Thanasrikul was the first one on the Koh Chang beach at Had Tha Nam, and he immediately envisioned its potential, purchasing a cheap plot of beachfront property and building the Siam Beach Resort’s cluster of rustic bungalows.

“There was nothing at the time,” says Natrapee Somnam, the manager of the Koh Chang resort and Konchai’s confidante. “no road, no water, no electricity, and no cold drinks. Koh Chang guests had to come from the mainland on a long-tail boat that docked on the beach.”

And come they did: Western escapees seeking virtual exile on a tropical island, enchanted by this one’s strips of brilliant – Koh Chang white sand, towering coconut palms, and inviting sweeps of blue sea. The Westerners changed the beach’s Thai name – which means “Beach Pier Water” – to one that was truer to its character, Lonely Beach, a name still in use today.

“Konchai realised that Koh Chang would be as successful as Phuket,” adds Natrapee. Not quite another Phuket, at least not yet, but not far behind now either. Still one of the quietest beaches, Had Tha Nam now boasts five resorts, and last year, Koh Chang’s Siam Beach felt compelled to adapt to the times by tearing down the rustic bungalows and rebuilding swankier residences complete with air-conditioning, TV and parquet floors. The island of Koh Chang was on the up – both in terms of visitor numbers and in style of accommodation.

The Rising Tide of Koh Chang

Elsewhere on Thailand’s second largest island (after Phuket), the real estate development has proceeded even faster. Koh Chang – whose Thai name translates to “Elephant Island” as it is shaped like an elephant’s head – is the largest of an archipelago of 52 islands which were designated a National Park in 1982. At the time, it was home to a few thousand fisherman and a rugged backpacker’s hideway; rapid growth in tourism only came in 2001 to Koh Chang when the government tramaced the road that sirts almost all of its coast and improved the ferry service from the mainland.

The introduction of Bangkok Airways flights a few years later made it all the more accessible – flight time from the capital is just 40 minutes to Koh Chang – and the proximity to Bangkok ensured that it became a viable weekend getaway for city slickers loking for some fun in the sun. Visitor numbers to Koh Chang have climbed to around 800,000 annually, and the transformation from a backpacker’s escapade to an upscale destination resort is now almost complete.

This new influx of higher-budget tourists spurred the construction of several plush Koh Chang resort on some of the west coast’s beaches – best of which are the Amari Emerald Cove Resort and Spa; AANA Resort and Spa; Ramayana Resort and Spa, Aiyapura Resort and Spa, Panviman Resort, and the SPA Koh Chang. All come kitted with luxuries set among tasteful designs and boast impressive spas offering all types of exotic therapies – traditional or modern massages as well as many rejuvenation treatments.

More new Koh Chang resorts are sprouting up with at least two openings expected in March; The Dewa, from the same owners of the upscale Ramayana, and the swanky Princess Resort Koh Chang by the Dusit chain, whose 96 rooms are a study of sublime Thai contemporary design.

Now, the island of Koh Chang is also due to get another first in the form of two separate private luxury residential developments – Tranquility Bay Residence near Bang Bao and Siam Royal View in Khlong Son village – to be sold as holiday or retirement homes, both complete with private yacht marinas.

Something for Everyone in Koh Chang

Not all resorts are high-end in Koh Chang, but different types of visitors will find something that suits their tastes and budgets in the three main beaches. Broadly speaking, these house expensive designer resorts at Had Kai Bae; cheaper backpacker bungalows at Had Tha Nam; and mid-range accommodations at Had Sai Khao, the longest beach in Koh Chang.

Yet, all these beaches hold the three quitessential Koh Chang experiences: a Thai massage under the coconut palms right in the sand, a dinner of fresh grilled seafood on tables set up on the beach and shows by the famour fire jugglers.

It is also possible to choose from a multitude of water-based activities such as snorkelling, or diving tours to explore coral reefs filled with barracudas at a cluster of offshore isles from Koh Chang in the south or fishing trips to reel in a variety of marine life, including the night time catching of squid.

Emerald Island, Koh Chang

Everywhere else, Koh Chang largely remains gloriously natural. The new developments are limited to small pockets along the west coast. Every vista is dominated by the interior spine of Koh Chang’s mountains, which meet the clouds at the higher summits, and are covered in impenetrable old growth jungle.

Indeed, the island of Koh Chang is one of Thailand’s greenest spots, and it is a joy to explore on a moped and make fascinating little discoveries –waterfalls and lagoons, tranquil creeks or streams, and a handful of quiet undeveloped beaches. The tastes of nature are all around: fresh watery wind, massive trees looming overhead, birdsong in the mornings, cacophonies of toads at night, short-tailed macaque monkeys dashing across the road, and cobras hissing in the grass.

The easiest way to get closer to the forests of Koh Chang is on an elephant at the elephant camp called Ban Kwan Chang in Khlong Son village. The camp’s 10 elephants and 10 mahours (elephant masters) – one mahout for one elephant – all hail from Surin, the northeastern province where mechanical tractors have yet to supersede the trunked workers in farms.

“We buy all the elephants when they are old and no longer strong enough for the farm,” explains Somsri Saiyot, who runs the camp with his mahout colleagues on Koh Chang island. “Elephants typically live until about 80 years old, and we only have females here, as males can be violent at times.”

The docile giants are playful with Koh Chang tourists, joyfully frolicking and trumpeting when fed, and splashing in the river like excited children during the treks that take Koh Chang visitors up the river and into the virgin jungle on elephant back.

Part 2 Continues Here.