The Sands Resort in Khao Lak, Thailand
During the Easter break, we travelled to Khao Lak in Thailand for a 10-night resort-style holiday. This was a much-anticipated trip that we had planned with our friends from England, Lee and Claire, about six months in advance. Lee is Andy's best friend, and they have known each other since they were kids. Lee's family is usually the one we meet whenever we go on holiday in Spain. The last time we took a trip with Lee and Claire, apart from meeting in Spain in 2019 and 2022, was in 2015. I was pregnant with Ella and we all met up in Vietnam for my and Andy's last child-free holiday. This time, we each had two children so of course it was a very different sort of trip! Lee and Claire have two girls, aged 4 and 6, and happily, all four kids got along very well throughout our 10 days together.
We flew from Melbourne to Phuket with Singapore Airlines. It was a 7am flight, which meant we had to leave home at the ungodly hour of 3:30am to be at the airport the required three hours before an international flight. Surprisingly, the kids were actually in pretty good spirits after their 3am wake-up and we had fun counting the number of red lights we stopped at (only 3!) all the way from our house to the airport.
Despite the early morning start, our journey was pretty smooth. Our first flight, to Singapore, was just under 8 hours long. I thought that since our flight was so early the kids would have a good sleep once we took off - but of course, I was wrong! In typical Ollie fashion, he fell asleep about half an hour before we landed in Singapore, and Ella nodded off for about 20 minutes mid-flight. Oh well!
We only had an hour and a half stopover in Singapore. It was just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat (the kids didn't like the food on the airplane) and take a short look at the koi carp ponds. Soon after we boarded our flight to Phuket which was only two hours long. Before we knew it, we were landing in Thailand! The initial views from the plane of the lush green islands dotted along the coast were impressive and excited us about our holiday and discovering a new place.
After going through customs and collecting our baggage, we quickly exited the airport, hoping to find the resort representative who would take us to the Khao Lak area, about 75km north of Phuket. As soon as we stepped out of the airport, we were hit by an intense wave of humidity that persisted throughout our 10-day stay. The daily high temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, combined with humidity levels ranging from 60 to 80 percent made this one of the sweatiest vacations of my life!
We booked our resort through the website Luxury Escapes, choosing to stay at The Sands in Khao Lak. We chose this resort mainly because it looked very family-friendly, with a kids club and water park area complete with slides, a lazy river, a splash park and a variety of pools to swim in. Our package included daily breakfast, free meals for the kids, two dinners for the adults, a daily cocktail hour and two massages for each adult.
This was our first resort holiday as a family - in fact, I think it's the first resort holiday I've taken since I spent a week in Crete when I was in my twenties! I won't lie, I used to be a bit snobby about this type of holiday, thinking it was not "real" travelling. And frankly, if you stay in the resort 24/7, it isn't really travelling - but if that's your thing, who am I to judge? I can totally see the appeal of a resort, especially with children, and I think our kids were the perfect age to do this sort of thing. Young enough that they still liked playing and the kids club (though Ella is at the top of the age range for this), but also old enough that we didn't have to stick by their side for every minute, and we were confident in their swimming ability.
After our first day of travel we arrived at The Sands around 4pm. During the drive to the resort Andy and I were doing the very parent thing of "look out the window! Isn't this exciting! Doesn't it look so different from Australia?" Both kids were super unimpressed and gave us deadpan "it looks the same as Australia" type replies. I'm not sure what Andy and I were expecting, this is probably exactly what we would have said as kids ourselves.
Finally arriving at the resort we checked in, met up with Lee and his family, and went straight to the pools for a quick swim before dinner. It was lovely to be in the water after such a long day of travel, and start to take in the beautiful surroundings. There is nothing like the start of a holiday when it starts to sink in that you have arrived, and there is no work, or housework, or extra-curricular activities for the foreseeable future. The possibilities of what you can do seems endless!
After our swim we attempted to eat at one of the restaurants in the resort, but Ollie was really flagging by that point and begged me to bring his dinner up to the room so he could lie down. By this time it was about 10pm Melbourne time, so it's not surprising that he was so tired! Andy stayed at the restaurant with Ella and the others for her dinner and I took Ollie up to the room where he was much happier in the air conditioning and ate his whole dinner. We got the kids tucked into bed and they quickly fell asleep, Andy and I ended up ordering a room-service pizza and eating it out on the balcony, overlooking the aqua play area and relaxing into holiday mode.
The next morning we were all up early, like 5am, it's still dark out, early. Ollie was originally in a terrible mood - he crawled into bed with me and stated "This holiday is stupid. I want to get back on the plane right now." Eek! Figuring he was just jet lagged and hungry we got up in the dark and started getting ready for the day. The breakfast buffet opened at 6am so we headed down at that time and enjoyed a very peaceful and quiet breakfast as there were very few others eating at this early hour. Ollie was very excited about the notion of a breakfast buffet, and soon his exclamations of this "stupid holiday" were long forgotten.
After breakfast we walked down to the beach to explore the area around the resort. This was probably one of my favourite mornings of the whole holiday. There is a silver lining to jet lag, when you wake up super early in a foreign destination. You just see the area in a completely different light at 6am vs 9am. The water was very calm and we had fun trying to catch glimpses of sand crabs scuttling along and disappearing into holes in the sand.
We came across this beautiful tree with strings of shells dangling from the branches, though sadly we discovered it was a memorial for victims of the tsunami in 2004 which devastated this area in Thailand. There were many more of these dotted along the beach.
We headed back to the room after exploring the beach. As the sun rose in the sky so too did the temperature and we needed to change into our swimsuits and put on some sunscreen. Our room had a king-sized bed that could be sectioned off with sliding doors, and then a living area with a sofa/bed and trundle bed for the kids. My first reactions were that it was too small (I've gotten too used to renting entire houses/apartments on Airbnb) but it was absolutely fine for us. (The bathroom also had a sliding door/wall so it wasn't always open like in the picture!)
We headed down to the aqua play area and spent most of our first full day there, with the kids spending some time in the kids club - which was air-conditioned and gave them a bit of relief from the heat!
The resort had three pools/aqua areas in total. The one we spent the most time at was the aqua play area, which our room looked out over. There was also an adult-only pool, and one other pool on the edge of the resort looking out over the ocean.
During our 10 days we took some trips out to the local area and explored some of the nearby restaurants. I'll write about our days out in the next post. On the days that we stuck to the resort we fell into a bit of a pattern of swimming in the aqua play area in the morning, followed by lunch at the restaurant overlooking these pools. Next, we'd have some downtime in our rooms for an hour or so in the air conditioning, and then the adults would trade off "adult time" with "looking after kid time". Claire and I went to the gym every day, and I got in a few yoga classes as well. Andy and Lee opted to play tennis (outside! In the humidity!) for their kid-free time.
Ollie loved going to the kids club and spent time there every day (the lure of possible time on the PlayStation sucked him in, even though these were mostly taken by the older kids), and the other three kids sometimes joined him. Ollie was very well known by the staff there by the end of our stay! He did play/watch other kids play on the PlayStation but the kids club also had a small ball pit and soft-play area with a trampoline that he liked, and he participated in many of the structured activities such as arts and crafts, a treasure hunt, etc. I don't have anything to compare them to, but I was very impressed with the staff and the set-up of the kids club at The Sands.
Ella was old enough to sign herself out of the kids' club with her parent's permission, so we allowed her to do this a few times, letting her know where to find the adults once she got bored of the kids club. She absolutely loved this little bit of independence that set her apart from the younger kids.
There was also a games room at the resort that provided entertainment and air conditioning, a big outdoor chess board and petanque area, and a koi carp pond with twice-daily fish feeding that the kids enjoyed.
As mentioned the four kids played really well together, and got into playing a few card games together such as Top Trumps, Go Fish and Uno. This was great for the days we went out for dinner as they had a way to amuse themselves while we waited for our food.
At 3pm we would all reconvene for our "cocktail hour" in the pool overlooking the ocean (pictured below). Of course, our "free cocktails" were exceptionally weak, as tends to be the case in resorts, but this was perfectly fine with me as it was too hot for a lot of alcohol anyway!
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