Choeng Mon

Choeng Mon is the bay on Samui’s north-east tip, past Chaweng and around the headland. It is largely residential, which is the polite way of saying there is not much to walk to, and it is about ten minutes by road from Chaweng if you want the noise on your own terms.

The location scores here disagree with each other in a way worth understanding. Tango Luxe scores 8.2 and Skye Beach 8.3. SALA scores 9.5, the best in the bay, and PS Thana Resort, the cheapest thing we list here at ฿1,763, is close behind at 9.4, ahead of Garrya’s 9.3 and Meliá’s 9.0.

Price barely predicts that ordering: the cheapest room in the bay places second and the most expensive places third, which is a useful correction to the assumption that paying more buys you a better position. In a quiet area a property’s location score largely measures how self-sufficient it is and how easily you can get out of it, not how much it cost.

Garrya has the most even scorecard in our data, with every sub-score at 9.2 or above and staff at 9.9. It does not top the island on average platform score, Phannarai House at Lamai does that for an eighth of the money, but nothing else we list holds every category that high at once. It was quoting around ฿9,199 a night, so that quality is not a secret and it is not cheap.

At the other end, PS Thana scores 8.3 on facilities, the lowest figure we have recorded on Samui. That is the honest cost of a ฿1,763 room on an expensive beach, and it is stated on its page rather than buried.

One genuine curiosity: the five properties here that publish a wifi score all sit between 9.5 and 9.8, the tightest range of any area we cover on Samui, and we have no explanation for it beyond coincidence.