Beautiful surroundings, comfortable rooms and really nice outdoor bathroom with a minigarden. It was a nice view to take in while showering and getting ready. The pier is frequented by boats a couple of times a day, we didn't get bothered by it. But the water on the north side of the pier was very murky and a lot of rubbish tends to get stuck and not flushed out to the sea. But just south of the pier it is very nice, but be aware there is quite a lot of rubbish on the beach, we found some really sharp objects like needle and glas. It is off the beaten track compared to what you can find on the south side of the island. There are not very many restaurants close by, you will have to rent a moped (400THB a day at resort) to be able to get to them. So make sure you are comfortable riding in the dark for dinner if you want to go out and eat dinner. It was easy to go by moped, rolling hills, not many cars or other vehicles. We were really happy though to find out that the restaurant serves really really good food. We rarely tend to eat very many meals at hotels, kind of like to go out and see what other establishments has to offer. But we were very impressed with the quality, freshness, flavours of the food, that we ended up eating all our meals except one lunch for our entire stay ( five nights) at the hotel. We heard from other guests we meet on a snorkling trip, they were staying at the hotels located just south of Shantaa and their food was not good, so we were very happy.