The Naka Island, A Luxury Collection Resort & Spa

The Hotel

The Naka Island sits on the western shore of Naka Yai (Big Naka), a small island in Phang Nga Bay roughly ten minutes by speedboat from Phuket's eastern Po Bay shore. The resort opened in 2010 as the YTL Group's "The Naka", was rebranded Naka Island under Marriott's Luxury Collection in 2018 following YTL's hotel portfolio realignment, and continues to operate as the only luxury resort on Naka Yai's western beach. The geography is the proposition: from your villa terrace, the view is open Andaman Sea over towards Phuket's eastern shore, mainland lights at night, no other resort visible from the property in either direction. The island itself is small, mostly forested, and inhabited only by a handful of fishing households on the eastern side.

All sixty-seven keys are private pool villas — there is no standard-room category. The Pool Villas are organised in three tiers: Beachfront (the largest inventory and the headline draw, with private pools twenty steps from the sand), Sea View (set just back, with elevated pool decks and clearer sightlines over the bay), and Two-Bedroom Family Pool Villas (separate sleeping quarters around a central living-and-pool pavilion). Every villa has a private infinity-edge pool, an outdoor sala, an open-air bathroom with rain shower and outdoor soaking tub, and a private garden envelope. The architecture — by Bangkok studio Lek Bunnag — is a more contemporary read on the timber-and-thatch tropical vernacular than Amanpuri or Trisara, with cleaner lines and more glass.

The boat shuttle from Po Bay runs roughly every half-hour during the day and on demand for evenings, and is the property's defining transition. Ten minutes is a useful length: long enough to feel that you've left the mainland, short enough that day-trips to Old Phuket Town's Sino-Portuguese shophouses, the eastern coast restaurants, or the western beaches remain feasible. Most guests, after the first day, stop leaving. The on-island programme is comprehensive enough that the boat is rarely required: Mai Spa with five treatment rooms in a beachfront pavilion, a fitness centre, a pool with sand-bottomed entry (the only such pool in the Phuket area), a kids' club for guests with children, and dedicated water-sports staff handling kayak, paddleboard, and snorkel programmes.

Dining is at three venues. Tonsai is the all-day overlooking the main beach, with breakfast and an evening Thai-and-Mediterranean menu. My Grill is the steak-and-seafood pavilion at the southern end of the property, set with feet-in-sand tables for the sunset hour. Z Bar is the bar lounge, with a rooftop deck oriented for sunset over the mainland skyline. The Naka Island works particularly well for honeymoons and proposals where the brief is "private island within a recognisable luxury structure" — the Marriott Luxury Collection backing means service standards are predictable, the boat shuttle solves the "we want to leave occasionally" problem that tends to break dedicated remote islands, and the rate sheet is meaningfully lower than Amanpuri or Six Senses Yao Noi for what is functionally the same private-villa-on-water proposition.

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Also Great for Honeymoon in Phuket