Replay Pool Villa

Booking.com showed photos suggesting a garden view with greenery, so I booked this place to unwind at the end of my Thailand trip. The room we got instead faced a busy main road, and looked nothing like the pictures. Staff told me all the “garden view” rooms face the road and that Booking.com's photos came from a different room type. The windows were poor quality, so traffic noise went on all night. I raised the mismatch with staff and then the manager, but they refused to move us. Their suggestion was to pay extra for an upgrade if we wanted a better room. The manager was rude and dealt with it very badly. The listing felt misleading, and the service was dismissive.

Location-wise, you have a few choices. There are cafes, restaurants, massage, nails and beauty places across the road, Fishermans Village is 10-15 minutes west, and Bangrak is 10-15 minutes east. You can walk along the beach to reach things, or get there faster if you've hired a scooter. It's close enough to everything while still giving you some space, but the noise is the downside. The standard villas face the bay and also face the busy main road. Traffic carries on day and night. On Friday, Saturday, Sunday and sometimes Monday, the bar across the road plays terrible karaoke. It's not a faint background sound, it feels like you're sitting there, even with the balcony door shut. You can look out at the ocean, but you'll hear scooters, cars, trucks and bars. The rooms are huge, bright, airy and modern. The unusual outdoor kitchen works well, though you need to time cooking to avoid sunburn or heat exhaustion. Late afternoons are lovely for watching the water at sunset, with traffic noise still in the background. The pool design is quirky, and swimmers or wind can splash people walking on the path below. The main pool is lovely in the morning, but by midday it's like a warm sauna. The washing machine's “fast” cycle takes 30 minutes with no other options. The drying machine tries its best, but clothes still need to be hung up to dry properly. Small missing conveniences chip away at what could be a brilliant stay: no hot water for washing dishes, no dishwasher, and not even a simple coffee machine. There are no lifts, so expect to carry bags up one, two or three flights of stairs. Massages are arranged through third parties, so you get WhatsApp menus and offers from random local businesses. Responses could be slow. We asked about extending our stay or getting a later checkout, gave up waiting for an answer and booked elsewhere. There's just one shared iron and ironing board, borrowed from reception. Pool towels were tatty and felt very second hand. For part of our stay the free daily water came in glass bottles without reusable lids, which felt dangerous on the tiled villa floor. If you don't return the bottles, it costs 50 Baht.

For a short stop near the airport or a remote work stay, this can be a useful base. The larger flats have a big TV and the internet is excellent. But if you want a restful holiday, to switch off from work and feel near the beach and nature, it doesn't really fit. The balcony kitchen is a nice feature, and our flat faced the sunrise. The central location is handy, though a busy road nearby brings clearly audible traffic. That's fairly typical in Koh Samui, but light sleepers should know. For a place costing close to £200 a night, staff training seemed uneven. Gardeners talked loudly outside the flats from around 8am, which can be disruptive if you're in a different time zone and it's effectively still night for you. The gym is a glass box right in front of reception. You hear the printer constantly and staff talking loudly while you exercise, so it's not a good setting for yoga or focused workouts, and makes it harder to switch off on holiday.

We chose this mainly for what looked like a nice room near the airport, though we already knew the location wasn't great for restaurants, stores or the beach. The room didn't live up to the photos. We booked a garden view, but the rooms face a street with heavy traffic all day and night. It was loud and awful. We checked the pictures carefully when booking and couldn't see any street view. When we asked to change rooms, they said the pictures we'd seen were of a different room. Even though they had free rooms, they'd only move us for an extra fee. The towels were dirty, there was mold in the shower, and the sofa was disgusting. The description mentioned a coffee machine, but there wasn't one. I would never recommend this place.