Fafá Island Resort

Fafá is Tonga's castaway ideal made bookable: an eighteen-acre coral islet thirty minutes by boat from Nuku'alofa, ringed by white sand and sitting within a lagoon zone prized for its reefs and marine life. The resort keeps the footprint deliberately light—a handful of traditional-style fales built of timber, thatch and woven panels, screened from one another by dense island vegetation, several with open-air bathrooms where you shower under the sky.

There is no air-conditioning, no television and no road noise; trade winds through the thatch and the reef's white noise stand in for all three. Days are snorkelling straight off the beach, kayaking the lagoon, walking the island's ring of sand and reading in a hammock, with whale-watching excursions in season—Tonga's humpbacks pass close between July and October—and day-trippers from the capital adding gentle life at lunchtime before the island empties again.

The sand-floored restaurant and bar serve fresh fish, island produce and cold beer with a sunset view back towards Tongatapu. Comforts are simple and the generator keeps island hours, which is exactly the point: Fafá offers the South Pacific reduced to its essentials, done with charm.