The go-to choices for Britons seeking a top-end holiday home that offers year-round sun, good-value living and middle-class leisures and pleasures such as golf and spas have for many years been Spain and Portugal. Yet, like a sliced approach shot from an Algarve fairway, their appeal is fading fast.

Many holiday-homers are turning away from the high property prices of Marbella and the Algarve (£10,000 and £8,400 a sq metre respectively), and from the Brexit fallout, and looking to Thailand.

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THE TIMES

Where to buy property in Thailand

With visas for digital nomads and wealthy retirees, a strong pound and swanky villas, this country is now open for business

alm-fringed beaches are beckoning. Year-round sun, dazzling street eats and picture-perfect scenery are back on the agenda — Thailand is finally off the red list and from Monday the country drops all quarantine measures and reopens its borders to vaccinated tourists from 46 countries, including the UK. The latest attraction? This month the Thai prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s cabinet announced a new ten-year visa, in addition to the existing Thailand Elite programme, to encourage “affluent global citizens” to relocate.

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THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Thailand’s Koh Samui: hippie hang-out turned upmarket resort

To cater for its new high-end buyers, bamboo huts have been replaced by gated estates with infinity pools and staff quarters

Alex Garland’s bestselling 1996 novel The Beach inspired a generation of backpackers to beat a trail to the Gulf of Thailand. They kicked back in hammocks on Koh Samui’s sugary beaches, grew dreadlocks and danced under a full moon, while dreaming of finding their very own secret beach, just like Garland’s disenchanted protagonist.

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