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The first thing I notice at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, the main filming site of The White Lotus season three, is… the heads.
They’re everywhere.
Above the pool outside my room, there’s a fountain depicting a gawking fish revealing yet more fish heads inside its mouth. Each has a spout of water, and each has spiral eyes suggesting something not quite right is afoot. On grooved switchback roads heading down to the beach, bronze visages stand serenely in the lush foliage. At the entry to the hotel’s signature restaurant, Koh Thai Kitchen & Bar, statues of monkeys standing one on top of the other welcome diners to the space. At night, there are orchids tucked behind their ears. Early in the morning, the blooms are mysteriously… gone.
Fans of The White Lotus know well that faces and their morphology—whether real or imagined—are important to the show’s creator, Mike White. In the trailer for season three, there is a closeup of a grimacing monkey figurine (which you can find on property behind a pool lounger), as well as of three young adults (I think these are new castmembers Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey’s screen kids, one of whom is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger) in a subtle see no evil (sunglasses), hear no evil (headphones), speak no evil (beer bottle to the lips) vignette. In season 2, Testa di Moro statues spotted around the San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel in Sicily act as foreshadowing devices from Italian folklore; they’re heads severed by a hurt lover. (As I stare at the strange fish fountain in Koh Samui, I can genuinely hear Meghann Fahy’s Daphne saying: “It’s a warning to husbands, babe. Screw around and you’ll end up buried in the garden.”) Later, I’ll find out that White picked the Four Seasons Koh Samui in part because he could feel “the eyes of the jungle” constantly watching from between the fronds.
It is an open secret that The White Lotus—the uber-popular HBO and Max show imagined by White and aggrandized in pop culture by stars including Jennifer Coolidge and Aubrey Plaza—films exclusively with Four Seasons hotels as its bases. Only now, with season three, is the partnership becoming more formal (more on this later).
This alignment was proof that necessity is the mother of invention: early in the COVID-19 pandemic, HBO execs needed a project that could be filmed in a standalone and easily surveilled setting. White set his comedic hothouse noir at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea in Hawaii, and, as season one grew in popularity, the public got behind it: the hotel-as-total-set worked brilliantly. It was almost like a high-budget black box theater, walled and tony and tense.
The fervor around season two’s location in Taormina would then grow heated, to the point of people booking trips there solely for its White Lotus association–to take a selfie, for example, where Coolidge’s hot mess heiress Tanya gleefully ignores a now notorious Peppa Pig-likening diss to do an entirely terrible Monica Vitti impression. And while there were off-campus excursions in that episode run, the property remained largely center stage.
Which brings us to season three, premiering on February 16. The Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui is stunning–maybe the prettiest so far in The White Lotus canon–with 43 acres of steep beryl hills that plunge into the pristine and paper-flat Gulf of Thailand. The hotel’s service standards are ultra-high (the staff seems to know where you want to go before you ask them), and its food is excellent (try the Yam Nua grilled beef, celery, and lemongrass salad at the waterside restaurant Pla Pla). Point being: if you’ve never seen or don’t care for The White Lotus, you’ll still likely have a lovely time.
But if you’re heading to Koh Samui with the show and its camp drama in mind, it’s especially fun to indulge in a bit of daydream intrigue–what kinds of craziness might the well-heeled subjects who visit here get up too? What do all those jungle eyes actually see? I think this will stay true after the show airs in full, too; why not travel with a little silver-screen imagination in mind?
Geographically, the Four Seasons Koh Samui is highly contained. Its 60 villas and 15 or so private residences funnel into a valley between two slopes, fragrant with tropical flowers and alive with exotic, sometimes haunting birdsong. You can’t really walk around its edges, unless traversing jagged coral flats. There’s one road in and one road out–ideal White Lotus staging, physically and thematically.
The show filmed here in February and March of 2024, and while the hotel was closed to outside bookings, it operated as it would otherwise–the stars and crew all stayed on property. It was 100% occupied. General manager JJ Assi tells me that, on certain filming days, boats anchored in front and illegally flew drones overhead. The hotel’s security put a quick stop to it. Assi adds that he was impressed by the cast members—now also including Blackpink’s Lalisa “Lisa” Manobal, Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, and The Gilded Age’s Carrie Coon—who showed interest in Koh Samui beyond simply enjoying the resort’s offerings. “They went out, the whole island,” he notes.
That said, there are key resort sites to flag for special attention if you’re planning to visit.
One is the Secret Garden Spa, which offers a holistic and herbal approach to health. I especially like the garden, planted en route to the spa’s villas, where ingredients for hot compresses and massage oils are sourced. Here’s hoping the brilliant Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda—the only cast member returning from a prior season—gets to achieve her caretaking dreams in Koh Samui after Tanya pulled the rug on funding their joint wellness center Maui.
Another is the large infinity pool and its bar, CoCoRum. This watering hole is monumental in scale, with oversized settees and plenty of shade if you’ve gotten a bit too much sun (or had a bit too much to booze). Here, bar manager Thom Geerts will have three special White Lotus themed cocktails, which will be available from February 16. Try the Coconut Paradise, which is highly drinkable–it’s vodka, soda water, and a cordial made of toasted coconut and pandan.
The last is the aforementioned Koh, perched above the trees—so high that, if Tanya were still with us, she’d undoubtedly say something along the lines of her famed season two quote: “Oh, God. This is such a beautiful view. I wonder if anyone’s ever jumped from here.” (My single favorite Coolidge delivery of the series, along with “I would like a splash of moscato!”) The Thai-centric restaurant is authentic and delicious, as are the cocktails, like the Koh Thai Sour. All of it enhanced by the vertiginous perch, the flower-sweetened breeze, and the orchestra of nature rising up through the night.
On my final day at the hotel, I swim about 200 yards out to a floating raft at sunset, which the hotel uses to stage water activities. Two French men paddleboard up to the pontoon. They’re staying nearby. “Well, the White Lotus mania is coming,” one says. At the bar that night, I talk to two people who have driven 45 minutes from elsewhere on Koh Samui “just to see it before the whole world does when the White Lotus comes out.” The Four Seasons, globally, is finally officializing its partnership with the show—the company will feature a worldwide three-month rollout of White Lotus cobranded moments, most of them extending to special beverage programs and/or spa treatments.
There’s something more subtly smart about the collaboration, too: The White Lotus essentially lampoons the habits and behaviors of deep-pocketed travelers, which, given the Four Seasons’ price point, is exactly the type of visitor that frequents the hotel—average daily rates at the Four Seasons Koh Samui are above $1,500. So for Four Seasons to lean into the show as being in on the joke versus being oblivious to it is very, very savvy.