The reception area was at one end of the resort, and it was small but nice.
The girls were mostly impressed by the one wall that had a waterfall feature.
Elena was a little too impressed, so Young kept a tight hold of her while I was getting us checked in.
We asked Young to come with us on this vacation partially because we're becoming completely spoiled, but also because we really wanted to do a boat tour, which is one of the best things to do in the area, and the tour we wanted to do didn't allow children under three, so Elena stayed at the resort with Young while we went out on the boat.
The hotel was pretty full, so in order to get something big enough for all of us, we upgraded to a private villa, something we've never done before. While it was a nice experiment, I don't think we'll do it again. The villa itself was lovely.
It was perched on the hill which gave it a nice view, but you had to go up two hills and a whole bunch of stairs to get there.
After surviving the climb, the first thing we did was put on our bathing suits and hop in the villa's infinity pool.
Elena only lasted a little while, but Jeff and Vivian had a lot of fun with underwater photography.
The big draw of the resort though was its beautiful private beach.
We brought our sand toys with us, but Vivian went straight into the waves and repeatedly giggled and squealed as she got smacked and washed up on the beach.
The sun was setting, so we just enjoyed the view and let Vivian play with her "wave friends".
She was in heaven.
Once it started getting dark, we finally pulled her out and took her back to the villa to try and get all the sand off of her. Once she was all washed up, we put on a movie for her and Elena, left them in Young's care with room service on the way, and then Jeff and I went out to dinner.
We wandered around for a while, appreciating some of the resort's cute touches, like flower petal happy faces.
We had also checked out the club for afternoon snacks earlier.
Since we stayed on the beach for sunset, we missed the evening free flow cocktail hour at the club. We weren't too upset about it though; the sunset was beautiful. Since it was late and our meal schedule for the day was a bit off from traveling anyway, we decided to just go up to the bar area and have some evening drinks and snacks. It was great, because we sat on a comfy sofa where we could hear the waves and just relax.
The next day was our boat tour, which was fantastic. As we were finishing up the day, Vivian said to me, "Mommy, you should do one blog for when we got to the hotel, and one blog for the boat trip, because we did SO much today." I agree with her, so I'll do a separate entry for the boat trip.
Saturday, we had a full day at the resort. Vivian, our new wave addict, wanted to go right to the beach, so Jeff took that on, while I took Elena to the baby pool area which she really liked. It was shallow enough for her to walk around in, so she walked, splashed, giggled, walked some more, splashed and giggled some more, and basically had a great time. After a while I asked her if she wanted to go see Daddy and Vivi at the big water. She was cool with that, so off we went. Once we got to the sand she put her arms up and made little panicked noises, so I picked her up and carried her down to the waves. She was not so sure about them. She seemed okay with the wet sand, but as the waves came up close to her feet, she kept saying, "Oh no, water! Oh no!" She was NOT happy when the water went over her feet, even though it was very gentle, and she started saying, "All done water! All done!" Jeff and I shrugged, and I took her back to the pool. She was freaked out about pools in the beginning too, so I'm sure she'll be jumping in the waves soon.
Vivian and Jeff took a break from the beach eventually, so that they could go down all the water slides and float along the lazy river. I took Elena back to the room and to Young for a nap. When I came back from that, I found Jeff and Vivian back in the waves. Since it was almost lunch time, we decided Vivian needed a water break, and Jeff took her up to get changed for lunch. We had lunch at the restaurant on the beach. It had big awnings, so that way we could enjoy the view, but still have some shade.
After lunch, we went to the kids club where Vivian made friends with some Australian kids and decided she wanted to play there for the afternoon. Since she'd been outside for most of the past few days, we decided that sounded like a good plan. Elena and Young also ended up at the kids club, so Jeff and I went to find some seats on the beach to relax and enjoy the buy one get one free happy hour. Our plan hit a slight snag when it started to rain. We were under a sun umbrella, and we had actual umbrellas with us, so we waited it out for a while, but it kept going, and we weren't sure how long it would take the sun umbrella to get saturated and start dripping down on us, so we went to look for a drier spot. We ended up finding a nice covered porch area with fans on the top beams. We had a breeze, and we could watch the rain falling on the pool area in front of us.
It ended up being a great spot, so we thanked the rain for the change of venue.
For dinner that night, we tried the buffet special. Each night is a different theme. Saturday's was all you can eat steak for about $35 per adult and kids eat free with two paying adults. Plus, you could get free flow wine for another $17 per person. It was a perfectly nice Chilean red, so we went for that. They kept our wine glasses full the way attentive wait staff in the States keep your water glasses full, so by the time we got to dessert and Vivian asked if she could serve herself vanilla ice cream from the buffet "ice cream truck" and watch a movie on her iPad, we said sure, everything is wonderful, you go ahead and have fun.
She got a chance to work off her ice cream though, because some of the staff from the kids' club came into the restaurant and rounded up the kids for a dance lesson/performance. They kept them busy and dancing for about twenty minutes while we finished up dinner.
By the time the dancing was done, Vivian was ready to go back to the room and go to bed. Thank you kids' club staff!
The next morning after breakfast, we took one last walk around the property.
Elena chased a dragonfly,
and the rest of us enjoyed the view.
We are so grateful for all the fabulous experiences living in Thailand has afforded us.
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