After a total of 18 hours in the air, courtesy of United Emirates from Manchester to Dubai and then Dubai to Bankok followed by Bankok to Koh Samui with Bankok Airlines we landed in our destination and home for the next ten days. Here is a bullet point list of comment that serves to inform.
Hotel - Superb, The gardens are excellent it is a mini paradise within paradise. Part hotel complex and part ancient rice barge rooms, the barges are beatiful and authentic but maybe not worth the additional cost over and above the room rates.
Food - Breakfast is plantiful and serves to please all tastes. I would not opt for half board as the local restraunts and bars serve high quality food and drinks for less than £10 per person over 2/3 courses inc drinks. Double and Triple this for hotel dining.
Beach - The Boat House residents spill onto the beach to take their places on the many sun lounges. Massage beds are available for about £4 for the leg massage. This is about 30minutes each leg and a back and head massage to finish. Superb. You must have one of these each day. Turn right when you get to the beach.
The local looky looky people are very talkative and will not push for a sale. Please spend some time with them, take an interest in their world and they will ensure you get a good deal. A £20 and a £5 note will buy you a high quality Rolex. A little discount for £s seems the thing.
Eat the grilled corn from the beach chef. He cooks it to order from a small barbeque that he fans with a piece of cardboard. Samll guy with a mexican moustache - get the right guy - he was named Jamie Oliver by my friends.
A small shop to the right of the beach and 20 yards up through the houses sells beer and soft drinks at a quarter of the hotel price and the hotel allows this practice without comment.
OTTOs beach restaraunt to the left once on the beach offers the best food and service in the area. Eat fried Barracuda and prawns.
I ate Thai every meal for the duration of the holiday and seafood at least once a day. Absolute Heaven.

We chose to stay at The Imperial Boathouse for our 2 week vacation after searching TripAdvisor and also got it recommended through friends who had stayed there before.

The room:
We initially booked a boat house suite because of it's size (90m2) and because it seemed fun and different. We stayed in the boat house suite for the first week, but then we decided to move to the honeymoon suite instead. We felt the boat suite is more suitable for families who need more space. Nothing wrong with it, except we found it a bit dark and because it was 2 floors, became a bit irritating after a while.. We loved the honeymoon suite (even though it was smaller, about 50m2), since it was brighter, more freshly decorated and recently renovated. Also we didn't have any bugs there what so ever in the one week we stayed there. It had a bathtub in the middle of the room, which was very original and cool :o) Fresh towels every day, both for the room and the beach was great! Also fresh flowers and fruit every day was wonderful.

Breakfast:
The food was very good and varied. Everything from fresh fruit and cerials to eggs the way you like them, different thai foods, pancaces, french toast and so on and so on. Great fresh fruit juices also - yummi!

Restaurant:
We chose to go to town (Chaweng) for dinner most nights (you MUST try Prego, an excellent italian restaurant! We LOVED it!!!), so we didn't try the hotels restaurant in the evening, just for lunch. The lunch menu has a lot to chose from and the food tasted good. We found the service at times to be quite slow and many times we had to ask more than once before we got what we ordered (that was if there was anything we wanted in addition to lunch such as bread, butter etc). We would not mention this if the restaurant was full at the time, but there were 3 waiters and only us there..

The beach:
Choeng Mon beach is in our opinion the best beach on the island, great, soft and white sand, the water's not so deep, not that many people who sell things, clean water and beach, not to crowded (not when we were there anyway). We also spent a day in La Mai and Lipa Noi, but we both enjoyed the hotel beach and found it to be the best :o)

The pool:
Very nice pool shaped like a boat (of course..). The water is very nice and clean. Nice pool area with a bar (you simply must try the different fruit shakes they have - YUMMI) near the restaurant that overlooks the sea and there are also sunbeds on both sides of the pool for those who don't want sand between their toes :o)

The spa:
We both visited the hotel spa one time and it was really excellent! Wonderful service and fantastic massage, we felt very relaxed afterwards :o) Of course a bit more expensive than the ones on the beach, but if you want a more exclusive feel, this is the place to go. We spent many hours beeing massages by the wonderful girls by the hotels pool. I'm not sure if this has anything to to with Boat House, but they whore t-shirts with the logo, so I guess so. No matter what, they were so kind and happy and gave absolutely fantastic massages and were always smiling! It's a real shame massages and things like that are so incredibly expensive here in Norway, otherwise we would have had them as often as we did in Thailand, it makes a world of difference.. We both miss the massages we got on the beach at the hotel :o)

Service:
Exceptional service every day all day from the hotels staff! Always smiling and very helpful :o)

Even though we stayed in Koh Samui in the rainseason, we had just one day of rain. The remaining days we sunny and some overcast, but because of the heat a little cloud was only welcome ! We still got a very nice tan :o)

It would be very helpful to learn a few words in Thai since the local population don't speak very much english.. And of course USE SUNLOTION with high SPF, we saw so many bright red people returning to the sun day after day after day..

We will definately return to the Boat House for outr next visit to Koh Samui :o)

We stayed here on our honeymoon, part of a three week trip involving two cities and two beaches (the other beach being Phi Phi Island Village which paled into comparison to the Boat House and supposedly had a much higher rating!). We stayed for five days and could easily have spent two weeks here! The staff were extremely friendly and helpful, our room was lovely and spotlessly clean, the food was really good and the location and setting where excellent. You could stay at the resort for dinner or there are a couple of other restuarants along the beach or Chaweng is a 10 min taxi away. It was reasonably priced - including the spa! And the best bit for us was the £5 full thai massages on offer along the beach.

We highly recommend this resort and will definitely be back if we get the opportunity.

A fantastic hotel, but if you are thinking of upgrading to a rice boat I would strongly advise against it. Ours was dark, dingy, damp and smelly. Our friend had continual problems with his shower which kept going cold. I cannot fault the hotel, food, staff and all the other amenities - excellent in every way. Samui is a lovely Island and the restuarants along the beach, on the whole were fantastic making us very welcome. I would stay here again no problem, but not in the rice boats.