Chiva-Som
Family-owned health resort on Hua Hin beach, founded in 1995 and renovated before 2020, with a personal programme for every guest.
- Neighbourhood
- Hua Hin beach
- Opened
- April 1995
- Design
- Ed Tuttle (redesign of rooms and key areas); Designrealization Siam (renovation)
Why we recommend it
Chiva-Som is among the longest-established wellness resorts in Asia, and it is still a reference against which others are measured. It is small, with fewer than sixty rooms, family-owned and structured: each guest begins with a consultation and follows a personal programme built around a goal.
Choose it for structure, and for a place that has been doing this since 1995. Our comparison of Thailand’s three great wellness retreats sets it beside Kamalaya on Koh Samui and RAKxa Integrative Wellness in Bangkok, and the guide to serious wellness retreats in Asia and what each is for covers the wider region.
Rooms & Suites
Accommodation falls into two groups. The Ocean Rooms and suites are in the main buildings facing the Gulf, and were the first to be renovated, in January 2017. The Thai Pavilions stand in the gardens: timber-clad rooms and suites in a contemporary Thai manner, finished in teak, silk and bamboo.
The Thai Pavilion Suites, rebuilt in 2018, measure about 76 square metres inside, with a raised ceiling, a long sofa, a larger dressing room and a bathroom with two vanities, and about 107 square metres with their terrace, outdoor pantry and private glass-walled sala, a garden room for a meal, for meditation or for doing nothing.
Dining
Food is part of the programme. The kitchen works with whole, largely organic ingredients, some of them from the resort’s own garden, and menus can be followed à la carte or as part of a structured plan. The Emerald Room is the main dining room, with a timber ceiling and green walls; Taste of Siam is the restaurant on the beach, open to the sea. The Orchid Lounge serves teas, herbal infusions and mocktails.
Design
The resort is laid out as a Thai village in a garden, with pavilions under traditional roofs between the main building and the beach. The renovation, carried out in four phases over about five years with the resort closing for part of each year, renewed the rooms, suites and pavilions with teak, bamboo and Thai silk. Chiva-Som credits the redesign of the rooms and key areas to Ed Tuttle, the architect behind the Aman look; the works were directed by Krip Rojanastien with the Thai firm Designrealization Siam. Our report on the completion of the five-year renovation has the detail.
Wellness & Spa
Wellness is the whole purpose of the place. After the renovation the spa covers 1,720 square metres and the health and wellness department about 2,700, including a Bathing Pavilion and Niranlada, the medi-spa for aesthetic treatments. The range runs from Thai massage and hydrotherapy to physiotherapy, detoxification and consultations with visiting specialists.
Guests have the use of steam rooms, saunas, jacuzzis and cold plunge pools, indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a gymnasium, and there is a daily timetable of fitness and leisure classes, with yoga and personal training available. The guide to wellness in Bangkok and Thailand places the resort in its national context.
Location
The resort occupies about seven acres of gardens on the beach at Hua Hin, a royal seaside town on the Gulf of Thailand, about three hours’ drive south of Bangkok.
- Website
- Official website
