Ao Nang, Thailand - July 2014

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Only a 1.5 hour flight from Singapore and we could immediately feel the relaxed vibe of Thailand 😊 We were picked up from the airport by the Holiday Inn and that lovely feeling that everything was sorted and we didnt have to do anything fell over us. He took our bags, gave us water, put us in an airconditioned minivan and we were off. The Holiday Inn is one bay away from Ao Nang so slightly off the main strip if you could call the main road in Ao Nang a strip 😊 The main reason we selected the HI was the availability of kidsuites (kids get their own room bunk bed style) AND a kids pool showing 4 slides in the photos. This was perfect!!! We could sit beside the pool and watch the kids play -yay!

So Day 1 was really swim, swim and swim and we headed right out side of the hotel for dinner. Maybe 500m away we came across a few little restaraunts that we could eat local food and look out at the amazing islands off Krabi. An interesting thing on this beach is the water level has risen over the last few years and in high tide the ocean is now up against the path and waves are coming across it. This has meant the dirt has washed out below it and the pavement is collapsing everywhere. While there we saw some council workers come and pull up the electricity for lights that were clicking away in the water!

For the next week we would eat breakfast, go for a swim, get a massage, then the big decision of the day... left or right for lunch?? Then more swimming, then left or right for dinner?? The kids loved the 3 wheel tuk tuks so we started to venture further away just for the fun of the ride. We did find just past the bridge towards Ao Nang a lot of local food hawkers on trucks which was great and easy to get heaps of fruit for the kids. Also I should mention immediately to the right of our hotel was a heap of little huts with cheap massage and a very cheap little cafe we ate at one day.

The hotel was a real mix of people from all sorts of places but quite a lot of families from Europe such as Norway and Germany. Both kids made friends with kids the same age and they started to want to go to the Kids Club with them! We did try to minimise this but we did sneak out for Thai massages together one day and twice went out for dinner by ourselves while the kids enjoyed a movie night.

It did rain a little bit (ok flash flood) on the first few days we were here but nothing to get in the way of relaxing. The sea did look very rough though so I wasn't able to convince the family we were bored enough to go out on one of the longtails...doh. We did go down to the ocean a few nights though at low tide to see if we could find some giant clams and the kids loved seeing the different shells and crabs wandering around. And although many say you can walk to the island on the right that certainly wasn't the case when you have a 3 yo. I have booked them all in for next year on a longtail though!

The Little Miss has asked if we can live here for ever and I certainly would love too. But both kids have asked that we come back, so I'll have to investigate that more for a future trip. We didn't really do much that Thailand or Krabi offers but I think we must have been to Thailand 10 times now so not sure we need to do the tourist stuff.. but we did eat heaps of local food, enjoy the atmosphere and the beach, and had fun...and the aim was to be relaxed and I think that was achieved😊

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