Before arriving on Koh Tao, we didn‘t really know what to expect. After a bit of research, we understood that Sairee Beach is the most alive spot on the island with shops, taxi cars & scooters and the freediving schools we were looking to go diving with. It was also the party zone of the island.

So where is the best place to stay to be close to all this, but not too close so that we can sleep through the night without party noise?

We decided to book 4 nights with the Beach Club Hotel, which is located between Mae Haad and Sairee Beach. It seemed like everything was in walking distance, so we decided to give it a shot.

Usually when we travel, we don’t like to plan ahead. We book a few nights in a place that seems nice on the internet to check it out in real life. Then, we extend if we like it and they are available. This approach can be risky – especially in the high season when it‘s really busy. For us however, having been here in October and November, it was perfect and we never had any issues.
So this is the mindset we approached the Beach Club with.

After arriving at Mae Haad Pier, we walked the main road towards the hotel – doing this up the hill with about 25kg of luggage balanced on the back and front in a humid environment was quite the exercise.
We arrived at the hotel at about 9am, after a night of travelling from Bangkok to Koh Tao. I am not the best at sleeping in buses, so I was pretty tired when we arrived – I mentally prepared myself to have to wait until 2pm so that we could finally enter our room and chill in a private set of walls.

Instead, they let us know that the room will be available in an hour.
I was stunned and so happy! This would have never happened in Germany (I think). So we dropped off our bags and went back to Mae Haad to get some breakfast at Isla Brew (I can very much recommend their Yoghurt bowl – delicious!).
Quick tip here: Walking to the hotel from Mae Haad is best along the beach – the hotel is impossible to miss.
After returning to the Beach Club, we were immediately given the keys to our room and the relaxation began.

Our room was fitted with air conditioning, a small fridge, an electric kettle, some instant coffee and creamer as well as tea. In the middle of the room was the huge bed and a small desk as a night table next to one side (my side 😉). The attached bathroom was designed as a wet room. The toilet had the special bidet-functionality which we have come to expect in Thailand, but were still a little unsure of.

The door between the bathroom and bedroom proved to be not very soundproof, which can be good to be aware of.

In front of the room, we had our own little balcony, which we enjoyed a lot. It was right in front of the juicy green-tiled hotel pool, which we made use of on a regular basis. Great spot to wind down and be prepared to sometimes find the lovely hotel cat warming the seat for you.

At night, when everything was quiet, we could hear the ocean waves, as the ocean was right behind our room, only 2min away.
However, sometimes it was a little noisy – especially when the occupants of the room above us decided to go out for a late dinner. I do believe that this is the same situation in almost every hotel – hearing people on the floor speaking loudly at any time during the day or night.
Sound-sensitive people may want to bring a set of earplugs though, this helped my partner a lot for when people got really loud.

One offer that really stood out to me, was the hotel pool. With the juicy green tiles, the color was reflected across the water, making it beautiful to look at and swim in. To me, the length also stood out. We estimate it at around 20m length with different widths, as it is not a rectangular shape. It proved perfect to swim our goal of 10 lanes a day and we even saw other hotel guests doing dynamic freediving training in there with longfins.

Walking along the side of our room, we quickly got to the path to the beach. Here, we could enjoy a beautiful view underneath the palm trees. There was enough space to put down a beach towel and spend the day there without being too crowded.

After heavy rain, the beach got very dirty, which surprised me a lot. I didn‘t expect to see such a huge amount of rubbish and it made me very sad. Seemed like the garbage from within the island flows out with the rain, resulting in more waste. This added to the already existent plastic-issue I noticed along the shore.
However, this is not related to the Beach Club hotel and there are many initiatives on Koh Tao aiming to manage that problem. We started to collect waste on every walk along the beach and either dropped it off to the sponsored garbage cans at Mae Haad or at the ones the Beach Club provides. One piece at a time, it will get better.

At about 5.45pm, we often went to the beach to watch the stunning sunset. I do recommend putting on anti-bug-spray beforehand, so that you can really enjoy how the colors of the sky shift from orange to pink to dark blue.

The hotel also offers massages and breakfast, but I cannot speak to that. We prefer exploring local cafés and restaurants and decided not to opt-in.

The daily room service always came at around the same time, supplying us with fresh towels and a refill of water and coffee. They were really quick and pretty spotless in cleaning our room. Shortly before they leave, they spray a lot of anti-bug spray to make sure you don‘t get any nasty visitors. It does take a few minutes of the smell to dissolve a bit and be less aggressive.
Even when we did not ask them to make our room, they still dropped the water and towels off, which was very friendly.

After 3 days at the Beach Club, we knew we didn‘t want to leave all that soon. We extended for another week and the hotel staff was very kind to flexibly make that adjustment for us. We could even stay in our room.
However, during this extended week, we decided that we love it here so much, that we really wanted to stay another 2 weeks and ended up prolonging our stay further. This time, we had to move into another room on the top level and we were keen to check out the views from up there.

The second room quickly became my favorite. We could even see the ocean peaking through the houses and now, we did not have any other hotel guests above us anymore. We did try to be mindful of our steps to not disturb the guests below us, but it seemed like the room was mostly empty due to the low season anyways.

During the beginning of our stay in this room, we did run into a challenge though:
An uninvited house guest. 🕷️

I found this guest whilst shifting through the things in my backpack.
Suddenly, something moved very close to my hand and retreated towards the corner of the room. On a closer look (which was needed, because the floor is very dark and so is the insect), I realised it was a huge tropical spider.

I am not particularly fond of spiders, especially when they are big and fast, which was the case here. My partner is even worse.
So I decided to have him be the watcher from a distance to not lose the location of the spider, whilst I went to the reception and ask for help.
The lady smiled at me and underlined that spiders in Thailand are not dangerous to humans. She then followed me, grabbed the anti-bug-spray and well… I would have preferred to keep the spider alive and just put it outside in a container, but I wasn‘t capable of doing that so how could I expect it from her?
We were very grateful for her help and made sure our bags were all zipped-up from then on out.

If you are looking for a perfect, spotless hotel, the Beach Club hotel is not the right choice for you. One can see that it has gotten into the years: Some tiles in the pool are missing, the pipe connecting the indoor-AC-unit with the outdoor unit is not white anymore and there are tiny plants growing inside the window frame of our bathroom. To me, these imperfections give it its unique character though and to be honest, all of these things are visual aspects only – they don‘t compromise the usage of things at all.
If visuals tend to dominate how you experience something, then you should be aware of this though.

We extended our stay 4 times in total, making this a total duration of about 6 weeks at the Beach Club hotel. This in itself speaks a lot about how much we appreciated this hotel and enjoyed our stay.

The location is great – central, but still quiet. If you are interested you can continue reading on the animals that crossed our paths when walking to our breakfast café in the morning.

We cannot recommend this hotel enough, they even gave us special prices due to our longterm stay. Extending in person and paying cash also saved us credit card and middle-man fees (like e.g. booking.com).

FYI: This post is not sponsored in any way, I just really wanted to share this beautiful spot. 💙