Five bedrooms, and laid out unlike anything else on the headland: wider than it is deep, which buys every guest more privacy. Each bedroom has its own ensuite and its own entrance. The upstairs master is a self contained suite. The other four are spaced around the pool with direct pool access and views over Nakalay Bay, with a game room set between them behind floor to ceiling glass, so anyone inside can still watch the water. Most of the outer walls upstairs are picture windows, which is where the name comes from: fah sai, Thai for blue sky. There is a formal indoor dining room, an open kitchen with a breakfast nook and a covered outdoor terrace. The eighteen metre infinity pool looks across the bay to the Patong skyline and falls into shade from mid afternoon, so it stays usable all day. The resident chef’s Thai cooking is the reason guests write about the food.
What this villa asks of us
Architecture of this calibre punishes neglect. Five separate entrances, five ensuites and an eighteen metre pool edge are five times the surface area for salt, damp and wear to find. Shibumi’s preventative maintenance programme protects the fabric, the finishes and the systems so the house always looks the way the magazines found it.
What guests say
Fah Sai has also appeared in Food and Travel Magazine Mexico, @Kitchen Magazine Thailand and Excelsior’s Bon Voyage supplement. Guests write about the food and the quiet.