LUXURY DESTINATION OF THE YEAR

The infinity pool bar at the Anantara Phuket tries to create the feel of the traditional water villages of southern Thailand.

THE next day, behind the town, I found unmistakable evidence of the tsunami. A small grassy park surrounds an incongruous police boat that was washed there, a mile from the sea, by the wave. The boat had been guarding a Thai prince who was killed in the disaster, and it became a place of mourning and remembrance.

Certainly, everyone who survived has vivid memories. My driver in Phuket, Marn, told me that 10 members of his family had died in the tsunami. But the forlorn boat, and an abstract memorial sculpture nearby, seemed forgotten. A few foreigners walked around the gray hulk in a warm drizzle, shaking their heads.

If there is any grand physical monument to the disaster, it is the rebuilt coast itself.

"It's back, stronger than it ever was pre-tsunami," said Bill Heineke, an owner of the Anantara hotel group, which got its start in northern Thailand and now has nine resorts around Asia. Anantara's hotel in Khao Lak was destroyed by the tsunami, but in October the group opened a new one on Phuket.

But the area's economy is at the mercy of more than the awesome forces of nature. Even as I strolled the beach, fresh troubles were brewing. The global economic collapse has been a blow to every region that depends on the disposable incomes of rich countries. Meanwhile, domestic tensions have flared as Thailand's complex politics works through a particularly intransigent period. Political demonstrations in November closed both of Bangkok's airports for days, stranding more than a third of a million travelers.

In an indication of how important tourism is to the region, the government of Phuket provided generous aid to stranded visitors (just as many visitors had heroically helped out in the aftermath of the tsunami). Even after the Bangkok airports had reopened, Nick Davies, managing editor at The Phuket Gazette, said, arrivals at Phuket were down by half. By December, in an echo of worldwide troubles, a group of tour operators appealed to the governor of Phuket for debt relief.

Yet the sea remains lambent and calm, and the air touches one's cheek like a kiss. From the porch of my little bungalow at the Baan Krating hotel in Khao Lak, where leafy palms and umbrella trees clung to the cliff beneath me, towering above the egg-like rocks bathed in clear water below, there was no sign of trouble whatsoever.

With business on the Andaman Coast suffering because of the worldwide slump, taking a beach vacation is actually the best way for foreigners to help. And they should find little reason for fear: political crisis in Thailand almost never has an impact on visitors, and tensions have lessened, making repeat airport closures unlikely.

In fact, now is a great time to go to the Andaman Coast. In normal years, the beaches can be overrun, crowded with as many snorkelers as fish, or by sunburned, jabbering tourists jockeying for position to shoot a scene as it appeared in "The Man With the Golden Gun" or "The Beach," which were both partly filmed there. But with visitation way off (skittish Asian package tourists are staying away in droves, although Northern Europeans seem unfazed), normally crowded beaches will have noticeable elbow room — even sometimes the solitude that is the often imagined, little realized ideal of a tropical beach vacation.

And bargains are easy to find. Luxury beachside villas at top resorts can be had at the last minute online for hundreds of dollars off their usual published rates. While I was there, I found an oceanfront villa at the two-year-old Ramada Resort in Khao Lak for under $150 a night — nearly three-quarters off the standard rate.

At the high end, the new hotels are competing to push luxury to new levels, — combining global style with Thai hospitality and tropical luxury — with private villas overlooking pristine beaches, pampering by attentive staff, deeply relaxing Thai massage, top quality international food and a sense of splendid respite from the woes of the world. The Yamu, a new high-end hotel scheduled to open late this year in Phang Nga Bay, promises luxuries including a chocolate room; interiors by Philippe Starck and the luxury hotel designer Jean-Michel Gathy; and, for traveling musicians who like to mix work with pleasure, a recording studio.