Designing Paradise with Bill Bensley - Season 1

Peek behind the scenes with Bill at Baan Botanica, home to his amazing tropical garden and studio. Bensley laments the loss of Thai charm it held when he arrived 35 years ago, but offers a solution by way of hospitality... the Siam Hotel.

For 2+ years, Bonkers Bensley scoured the globe collecting antiques to renovate the 1898 hill station of Auguste Pavie. Located in Luang Prabang, the property is an eclectic collection of colonial architecture offering a fascinating history of Laos.

It's a little known fact that Holland invaded Bali on numerous occasions but were thwarted every time. Bensley's newest hotel is a tongue in cheek acknowledgement of the Dutch blunders. But is it too strange?

Bensley claims that the future of super high end travel is about providing experiences and 100% private outdoor garden spaces for guests to enjoy as they like. Bensley's tiny noteworthy hotel offers both, while also helping the local community.

Bensley has reconstructed the Lamarck University grounds into Asia's most unique resort. This vast project has taken 5 years of planning. Based on the original university's footprint, Bill creates landscape gardens with supersized monuments.

Bensley is relentless about saving every one of the 854 coconut trees that occupy this pristine bay in Koh Samui, Thailand; looks at whether Bill's philosophy of minimal intervention will prevail and if other professionals will follow suit.

Located just off the Mekong in the Golden Triangle of opium fame, Bonkers Bensley has set up for the most expensive Four Seasons a home to a maximum of 30 happy campers and 26 lucky relocated street elephants set free in the resorts wild country.

Tran Nhan was an intelligent king in the 13th century. Yen Tu Mountain, his last resting place, attracts millions of Buddhist pilgrims yearly. Bensley implemented a huge master plan that resulted in visual harmony and simplicity of the 13th century.

Udaipur, the city of lakes, is very special to Bensley because he has worked on two of the lake palaces there. He visits the first palace he helped design, the Oberoi Udaivilas, which was voted as one of the most stunning properties in the world.

Shrouded in clouds, Bensley has designed from scratch the Hotel de la Coupole of chaotic Sapa, Vietnam. He explores the relationship of the fashions of the indigenous hill tribes are juxtaposed with those of the haute couture in 1900's Paris.

Aptly named The Slate, one of Bensley's first creations is a beach resort like no other. This Tin Mine-themed resort offers brutal iron and concrete décor along with cutlery that looks more like a box of spanners.

This episode catches Bonkers planning the latest batch of renovations for the Four Seasons Chiang Mai, and he also visits his favorite local cache of antiquities. Can the old dame of Chiang Mai still wear her lipstick well? You decide.

Bill honors the Khmer king Jayavarman with the new Shinta Mani Angkor Bensley Collection, providing experiences and private gardens for the guests to enjoy while helping the local community.