We visited the province of Trang, Thailand last week and stayed at the Anantara, Si Kao, Thailand ( http://sikao.anantara.com/default.aspx ). It was a nice visit. But it wasn’t my pick. I would have much rather stayed on some island off the coast of Thailand and what we first discussed when we started planning the trip, months ago. The girlfriend told me about two places she had visited years ago (on two different islands) that I wanted to visit but she said their prices were unreasonable in today’s environment.
I am not promoting Anantara, it is just another place you can stay while in Trang. There were many guest houses and smaller resorts that we saw from the Trang airport to the resort, close to the public beach.
With that out of the way,…more about Anantara. The resort has a nice family friendly atmosphere,...wading pool for the kids and a large game room. You can rent small sail boats, kayaks, wind surf boards, etc. by the beach, provided by the resort and you can get lessons if you are not familiar with the equipment and want to learn. The resorts pool was wonderful. It is equipped with spa like jets of water in some areas and two depressions along the side of the pool that you can lay down in while bubbles relax you.
The Anantara has a nice open air design in most all the common areas and is furnished with nice Thai style beachside resort type furniture. It is comfortable to lounge around the entire complex, as we found out using their free Wi-Fi hook-up. The rooms were nice and very comfortable. Evenings were quiet and with the sliding glass doors open during the evening, the only thing you could hear were the waves slapping up against the sea wall, with an occasional outburst of excitement from the fans enjoying the World Cup in the outside bar close to our room. Some of the suites at this resort have their own pool as pictured below.
The staff at the resort was exceptional; it might have been due to the lack of guests at the place (maybe 50 people while we were there), they were so attentive. You only had to look up once and someone would be at your table, poolside or by the bar. It was un-believable. We spoke to the kids working there and it seems all the help we came in contact with had degrees in either business management or hotel management/hospitality. The General Manager (Morten Junior,… a Dane and married to a Thai) seemed to be on a mission to meet all of his guests. He was a nice guy,.well mannered and well spoken.
The resort has two menus,………one Thai and, one Italian. Every meal we ate was fantastic. Breakfast was all you could eat and free with every nights paid stay. Beautiful views from each of the two restaurants at the resort but the Acqua Restaurant (wine cooler and a large selection of wines to choose from) had the best view, where breakfast and dinner was served every day (smaller of the two restaurants and they might have opened it up due to the low occupancy).
If you open up the link to the resort that I provided above you’ll see that they offer many spa and wellness treatments which we didn’t use, but they did look tempting.
Spa Area
Video of the Anantara, below.
I’ll add a post later about some of the places we visited and learned while in Trang.
And one other thing,.if you do open the link to the resort, don’t pay attention to the room prices. They are way off (today, June 19, 2010) for some reason.