Chiva-Som Hua Hin

Opened in April 1995 on the site of founder Boonchu Rojanastien's former beach house at Hua Hin, three hours south of Bangkok. Boonchu — a Thai businessman and the country's former Deputy Prime Minister — had spent the 1970s visiting European health farms, and built this to bring the idea home. The name means 'Haven of Life'. It was Asia's first Wellness Resort of its kind, and thirty years on much of the region's industry descends from it.

The family still runs it: Boonchu's son Krip took over, with a grandson now in operations. Krip oversaw a five-year, twenty-million-dollar refurbishment, which is why a property of this age doesn't feel like one.

The offer is genuinely deep rather than broad — over two hundred treatments, wellness cuisine that has been widely imitated, and diagnostics extending to longevity genomic testing. Programmes are structured around a consultation on arrival rather than sold from a menu.

Two things define the experience more than any treatment. Mobile phones are not permitted in public areas, which changes the atmosphere completely and is the thing returning guests cite most often. And unlike its Qatari sister property Zulal, Hua Hin does not accommodate families — this is an adult environment throughout.

Guests wanting a beach holiday with a spa attached will find the structure and the restrictions unwelcome. Guests wanting the discipline will find thirty years of practice behind it.