We had a wonderful time at Dewa, as did our 6 yr old daughter. We enjoyed the two pools, onsite restaurant and national park beach. We stayed in a 2 BR, 2 bath unit with convenient kitchen, broadband wireless, comfortable beds and great view. Strongly recommend checking this place out for a stay, and you will want to return for lots of reasons.
UNIT: the 1 and 2 BR apartment [residence] style units are very comfortable, well laid out and all have great views of blue sky, the pool and the national park with trees and ocean water visible through the tall evergreens.
POOLS: The apartments have a 25m pool that is excellent for swimming laps and sun bathing. Excellent for night swimming as well. There is another pool in the lobby restaurant area that is more sculptured and visually interesting. It is shaded from the afternoon sun by the national park trees across the street. This makes it especially nice for late afternoon swimming for people who want to avoid direct sun, such as my Chinese wife!
FOOD: The onsite restaurant overlooks the pool with beautiful views at night. At breakfast and mid-day there was a pleasant breeze blowing through. We like to eat! After being open only one month, the restaurant served great food. The Shrimp Tapas [Tapas for two] is utterly delicious, with barbequed shrimp and a tangy dipping sauce that kept us coming back for more. The restaurant will cook to your taste, and we asked for medium spicy on just about everything. The green curry is delicious. We didn't want the sweet and sour sauce on the stir fried fish, so we asked for a ginger, garlic and soy sauce, and it customized to perfection..
SERVICE: Staff were Thai friendly, responsive, and surprisingly well trained for the hotel to have been open such a short time.
BEACH & NATIONAL PARK: Dewa is situated across from a national park. What makes this truly special is the tall evergreen trees that line the beach, and the peaceful serene ambience. These tall interesting trees fully shade the beach until 10 or 11 in the morning. For those who want sun, it is available at the pools. For those, like us, who try to avoid direct sun, a shaded beach with cool breeze and gentle waves is a gift. The beach is good for children to look for shells in the morning or late afternoon. The sand packs well for sand castles too. This kept our six year old busy while we took a break
CHILD FRIENDLY: The hotel has a Kids room as well as inexpensive baby/child care service. This was nice because it gave us an occasional break from our daughter's high energy level. Late one afternoon my wife had already gone back to the room from our usual lap swimming, and my daughter wanted to return, but I wasn't finished swimming. I asked one of hte staff to take her back to our room. This was done with "Thai service" and a smile, which I appreciated. The combinaiton of kids room, shaded morning beach, shelling and sand castling makes Dewa quite Child Friendly.
LOCATION: Dewa is located near the airport, but not on the flight path of planes. There are beach restaurants and bars nearby that offer some local diversity to the hotel.
WORK: we do email and surf the internet even on vacation. The broad band wireless was surprisingly fast, so we could download huge files with no difficulty whatsoever.
As I am writing this, I am laying on the couch, connected by wireless broadband, looking out our ceiling height windows onto the blue pool, sand colored units, blue sky and tall evergreens. An idyllic view for writing.
Hope this will encourage others to check it out. We enjoyed it!
Any questions, email me at irvb@sh163.net
