The Siam Palm Residence has recently been renovated into modern serviced apartments - in fact when I arrived they were still putting finishing touches on and I was the first to check in!

The apartments are in a good location in the Aroonsom Plaza at the northern end of Patong, quiet enough but close to the action if you want it. The Patong Food Park is just behind it for cheap and good meals at night plus The Sandwich Shoppe is only a few doors down for good coffee, sandwiches and breakfast.

I stayed in a one bedroom apartment at the front of the building. The apartments are modern, western style apartments with all the modern amenities. My apartment included a kitchen with full size refrigerator, stove, microwave plus cutlery, dishes, glasses/mugs and cookware. Both the combined living area/kitchen and bedroom had separate air conditioning and LCD television with plenty of satellite stations in a variety of languages. Wifi was included and was fast and reliable.

The bedroom was spacious but as with many Thai beds the mattress was very firm. Probably not helped by the fact that I was the first to sleep on it. The bathroom was an ensuite off the bedroom.

There was a bonus of a small pool out the back surrounded by chairs and umbrellas. A pleasant surprise since the web site said they didn't have one.

Breakfast isn't included as it's an apartment not a hotel but there's plenty of places nearby including the aforementioned Sandwich Shoppe.

Noise was a bit of an issue during the day due to the building work on the apartments next door but was limited to the middle of the day and wasn't for the full duration of my stay.

The staff and owners were friendly and accommodating, there were a few teething problems as you'd expect with a place that had just opened but they were always willing to help where they could.