InterContinental Phuket Resort

Some luxury hotels, faced with a setting as heavily traveled as Phuket, might opt to shy away from the limelight, hiding their guests away inside something quietly luxe, low-profile, elegantly minimalist. Not the InterContinental Phuket Resort. This resort, on the island’s Kamala Beach, aims to convey not a vague internationalism but the specifically Thai conception of heaven — all of it culminating in the towering spire of the resort’s temple-like central pavilion.

It should be said that all of this is done with the utmost good taste — making the results all the more surprising. Here’s a beachside luxury resort that takes aesthetic risks in its public spaces, but whose rooms and suites, while colorful, are a touch more classic in style, allowing the eye to wander out towards the waters of the Andaman Sea.

There’s an extravagant Thai spa as well as a generous handful of fine restaurants, including Tengoku, serving teppanyaki prepared in an open kitchen, Pinto, a market-inspired eatery, and Jaras, an upmarket Thai restaurant serving family-inspired recipes prepared to gastronomic standards in a calming indoor-outdoor space. The resort has a substantial outdoor pool, and the beach is just yards away.