December 2015 -
I'm laughing at myself as I realize that it must appear to others that we're always on vacation if you just look at the photos on our blog.
Just for the record, we're not always on vacation. However, we do try to get out every few months (especially to fill up our lungs with fresh, clean air!).
Our most recent trip to Thailand was to Kao Lak – it's on the Andaman Sea-side of Thailand and we chose it for its relative proximity to the Similan Islands. Ever since our first trip to Thailand and our brief visit to the Similan Islands we sincerely wanted to revisit the beautiful islands and try diving there.
We stayed at the JW Marriott in Kao Lak – a GIGANTIC resort on a beautiful stretch of beach. And the pool! The pool was designed so that all rooms on the bottom floor had their own personal access to the pool….which looked more like a lazy river passing by our room. Perfect! Instant entertainment for kids. Since we were only staying for five days we didn't explore the Kao Lak area.
We flew into the Phuket airport late at night and promptly fell asleep in the transport van on the one-hour drive to the resort.
Here's the hotel lobby all dressed up for Christmas (which Thai people don't seem to celebrate…so this is purely for the foreign guests).
Breakfast time!
The fantastic lazy-river style pool to play in!
The lazy-river pool ends in this lovely, large pool (that also has a swim up bar):
Our dinner….tough choice!
I know what I want….lobster!
Hmmm…this is NOT a good sign…this boat is LOADED with lots of people. This is not going to be a personalized tour. And it didn't start out well when my questions were ignored.
Similan Islands…Annika and Mark are going diving. But here's the lousy thing – even though there are lots of people working on this boat I still had to stay behind and watch Ava (the non-diver). While Annika and Mark enjoyed two one-hour dives, Ava and I spent less than thirty minutes on beautiful beach that was crammed full of other tourists. Sigh. Very disappointing. Such a beautiful place and only a few minutes to enjoy it. Meh. After a nice lunch we did go snorkeling but Ava spent the entire time arguing and complaining about her mask that I was DONE with this lousy trip. At least Annika and Mark had a fun couple of dives. I'm so jealous! I didn't even see any Nemo fish (clown fish). Ava and I should have just stayed at the hotel – we would have had more fun. Plus it would have been cheaper. I hate wasting hard earned cash on something that ended up being extremely frustrating and boring. Oh. And the boat crew were even slightly unethical in that they were feeding a sea turtle scraps of leftover food from lunch. Not cool. I also collected a couple of pieces of plastic trash while snorkeling. Not as pristine as I remember it from our last visit.
Our divers! These two got to dive through caves. And they even got to see a sea snake! Sea snakes are incredibly venomous…do NOT mess with sea snakes! (Apparently it was NOT interested in the divers)
We can just walk out of room and jump into the pool!
We spent equal time between the pool and playing on the beach and swimming in the ocean. We started out in the ocean but after getting continuously stung by oodles of tiny jelly fish we switched to the pool.
Lunch outside the resort. Fantastic Thai food!!!!
While Mark and I got massages Ava had her hair braided into tiny braids. Annika wasn't interested in having her hair braided on this trip.
The local ladies were quite amused with Ava's messy hair…it took them quite some time to brush it out properly so that they could braid it. 😉
Dinner outside the resort. I wish we'd walked down the beach and gotten lunches here. I really like the food in these tiny beach-side restaurants. Plus, the prices are down to Earth AND the cocktails we ordered actually contain alcohol in them! The horrible truth is that the JW Marriott in Kao Lak charged buckets of money for cocktails that were mostly WATER. I can't even be sure if there was any alcohol in the drinks we ordered. Mark ordered a dry gin martini and it was mostly WATER. YUCK! While I am okay paying a higher price for certain items (I mean, we ARE at a resort so it's kind of silly to think the drinks would be cheap BUT….and here's a BIG BUT..I am very much opposed to paying for items that are being falsely advertised.)
Annika wants to explore the area.
Watching the lone fisherman out in the water at dusk:
We left on a red-eye out of Phuket. I do have to tell you about our check-in at the airport. It was the fastest yet! I think from the time we arrived at the airport and went through security it took all of maybe twenty MINUTES. Seriously. I think it had to do with the fact that both Mark and I have gold status on Delta and we were flying on a partner airline (Korean airlines). We were on the short list of people that were allowed to use the VIP lane. Wow! I've never EVER felt so privileged! We felt a little weird cutting ahead of other people waiting in line but the airline attendant shuttled us through the line and had us cut in front of everyone. Sorry about that (other people)! We're not the kind of people that cut in front of others. Ah well.
And now we're back in Tianjin. Just in time for Christmas. This year we're celebrating Christmas at home.