Travel: Thailand

You might think the 'eco tourist' and 'luxury resort' are incongruous sun bedfellows, and my previous experiences of five-star destinations in Europe, the United States and Australia had, indeed, suggested just that, but there do appear to be glimmers of hope on the horizon for those travellers with moolah and morals.

Tongsai Bay on Thailand's island of Koh Samui was built before the recent rush of development from foreign investors, before the tsunami of 2004 on the west coast drove tourism to the country's eastern havens, and even before Alex Garland put pen to paper and Samui on Generation X's wanderlust trail, back in 1985 when there was enough unspoilt land that Tongsai could nestle villas in forests of uninterrupted coconut trees and visitors could co-habit with wildlife as part of their holiday experience.

The resort is one of an increasing number of destinations in Thailand seeking to help reconcile the tourist's dilemma of how one dresses for dinner draped in one of Mobama's favourite designers, the native Thakoon, while resting easy that the cost of your holiday is invested in something above and beyond the wage bill of seasonal staff.

You need only set foot on the resort today to experience how that determination to maintain a luxury complex built on the values of sustainability still succeeds in embracing you as a guest.

From the elevated villas on the tropical hillside around the sea, with their terraces that have a land mass bigger than most people's back garden, where you dine, dip into your own private infinity pool and snooze in the four-poster day bed, with a vista of the sandy curve of Tongsai Bay looking out to the Gulf of Thailand; to the Prana spa, the arrival to which through a lush secret pathway is something of an Indiana Jones-style escapade for which you reap the reward of treatments focused on authentic Thai therapies, Tongsai has you yielding to its cause by the most intoxicating of covert touches.

I have to say I'm not sure if it was the elation from all the eco self-satisfaction I had notched up or the magic touch of the therapist, but my Samui Dream massage in coconut oil brought me to tears.

1000 Thai baht says it's the western guilt oozing out of my tear ducts, right?). Flip-flopping my way out under the canopy of trees, along the stepping stones by the babbling stream and down to the beach at sunset, I wondered if this was what the true hedonism Thailand has to offer felt like - pure, cleansed, euphoric and utterly, unashamedly smug.

So far, so typical of a luxury Thai resort, you may be thinking, but Tongsai Bay does so much more than just promote itself on its green credentials.

In business terms, through its impressive waste management system, self-sufficiency for food with its farm and garden, and recycled cleaning materials, it promotes these values back into the local economy and community.

This not only educates locals but has gone so far as to build a low carbon school on Samui, and create a partnership with leading hotels on the island to see that its environmental ambitions are not just maintained, but introduced as part of Samui's code of practice for new developers.

What difference does all of this make to your holiday experience?

As much as you want it to, I guess, as the garden and farm are there for all to see, the staff are incredibly proud of the award-winning Green Project and were brimming with enthusiasm when I quizzed them over dinner, cooked from the hotel's garden and consumed among the very coconut plantations that Tongsai originally cosied down among. Whether you choose to admire that or ignore it is entirely between you and your conscience.

So to another of Thailand's most popular islands, the jaw-droppingly stunning Krabi, and its attempts to retain its precious ecology in the face of increasing tourism and the industrial impact that brings.

Rayavadee resort on the edge of the national marine park on Phranang Peninsula near Krabi can only be accessed by speed boat - one with an energy- efficient engine that reduces fuel consumption by 40 per cent, of course - and the thrilling approach over pure green shores and through towering limestone cliffs is nothing short of awesome.

We are in a different league of luxury here, one the likes of Gwyneth and Kate have revelled in and saw Rayavadee listed for the second year in a row in Conde Nast's prestigious Gold List: Best Hotels in the World in 2010.

What Rayavadee is seeking to do, however, is to encourage tourists to invest and immerse themselves in the marine park habitat of coconut trees and limestone in the face of increasing numbers of daytrippers who come to the renowned picturesque Railay Beach but bring with them little concern for waste and resource management.

The scale of the resort is discreet, opting to take responsibility for its position in such a precious part of the world by keeping any development restricted and choosing instead to invest in water and fuel works that remove the need for industrial transport to continually visit the peninsula.

The architects who designed Rayavadee created cottages in a round form to allow the trees to naturally grow, and the design of the hotel and villas is meant to recreate the ideal of a southern Thai village.

Beyond the exquisite beauty of these luxury pod-like homes, with first-floor bed and bathrooms and downstairs lounges in dark tropical wood, is an environment that simply forces guests to stop and engage with their surroundings, whether it's taking a deep breath by the natural lily ponds on pathways, or spectating as the gibbons chitter to each other in the trees and traipse across the rooftops.

This was October, the end of Thailand's rainy season and start of the cool, and sure enough there was enough rain in two days to stop a Blackberry in its tracks through the effects of condensation, and call for a new set of flip-flops before trench foot set in.

But as I ate my dinner in the hotel's beach cove restaurant, under the cliffs and the stars, and brushed my hand on the walk back to the villa over the beach sign that read "co-creating for survival", I didn't much care.

The Blackberry message was still there when the phone dried out: "Found paradise, and it's guilt free."

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 23 January, 2011