Villa Allure Koh Mak

Villa Allure is a nice hotel/place to stay in Koh Mak. It is located in the north eastern part of the island, quite a distant from the lively areas in between rubber and palm trees. The set up of the resort is nice, the path to the house takes you partly through the forest. You can tell that nature and the house blend well together. The house was clean, spacious, modern/minimalistic and bright. Tones of white, gray and wood mixed together. The toilet was spacious with a shower area next to it. The sink was located in the room. There was a large bed with soft pillows and the aircon worked well. I liked the service that the people provided. On the first night our house short circuited. They tried their best to fix the electricity but to no avail. Staff did some calls and we were offered to stay at a different location. At first I believed that we would stay at someones house, but we were transported to another resort called the Makathanee resort in the south of the island. Renting a scooter is easy, and you really need to do that if you want to see the island. The view of the house was splendid, we got a house that was partially sea and garden view. You can take one of the canoes and canoe a bit around the area. Regarding the location. It is located in a remote area of the island. You NEED to rent the scooter of the resort if you wish to see the island. When I say remote, I mean really remote. Like you can travel at night (starts at 6pm) and not see anyone as you drive through the pitch black palm and rubber tree forests. The nearest restaurants are around 10 to 20min away by scooter and only a few roads are lit. Lucky the island is not heavily populated so driving around by scooter is really easy as there is barely any traffic.

At a first glance I really liked staying at Villa Allure and it is worth the score it has, but there are a few things I believe they might be able to improve on to make it even greater. 1. WiFi. WiFi is offered in the common area near the reception and kitchen, unfortunately it was not working at all, and during my entire stay I was unable to check my messages which I kind of needed to do for work on those specific days. 2. Furniture outside. The houses are really nice, but I missed having some essential furniture. You have a big veranda attached to your house, but I missed having a chair or two so I could sit there with my partner and enjoy the view of the garden and the sea. Two simple wooden chairs with maybe a table would be an improvement. A dry rack outside for some of the clothes would also have been helpful. 3. Furniture inside. The room is big and spacious and I found out I kind of wanted to have a chair inside as well, something where I can put some clothes on. There is ample space for that. I also missed having a dry rack inside. There was one in the bathroom but to small if you are traveling with someone else. Adding to that I missed an area where I could hang my clothes. No clothes hooks or a beam to hang them. As mentioned before, there is space for that. 4. Smell. Now this is something I noticed when I arrived that there was a particular smell at the reception/entrance. At first I believed it had to with the big fish pond and the koi carpers, but on the last day I found the issue. Around the entrance there are several water basins and one of them was nearly empty. I looked inside and saw a lot of frogs in there. Now that is not bad at all, but I noticed that there were several of them floating dead in shallow murky water. I guess due to the heat the water dropped so low that the frogs couldn't get out. This also explains why there were so many flies in that area.