The American Family Goerss: Fun at the Rayong Marriott

Rayong is on the eastern side of the gulf of Thailand, a bit past Pattaya. It's where we parked our car to take the boat to Koh Samet. Past the port area though, there's a strip of beach with several hotels. There's a Marriott there that lots of our friends have stayed at and really liked. We like a beach vacation within driving distance, so we figured we'd check it out. It turned out to be lovely.

We got some friends to go with us, and split the cost of a van, which helped Jeff enjoy the vacation more. Driving in Thailand can be stressful, so if we don't have to drive, we prefer not to. A fun part of riding, rather than driving or navigating, is that I can take my time looking out the window. We went into downtown Bangkok to pick up our friends, and we drove past a whole bunch of street vendors. When we came around the corner off the highway, we saw some cool fruit vending stands.

Young and I decided that was a jack fruit she was cutting up. Then we drove by vendors who had the prime shady spot under the highway.

The next time we stopped was at the intersection near the Erawan shrine. There are tons of flower vendors there, so that people can buy flowers to leave at the shrine. Most of the vendors keep busy by working while they sit.

One lady was making the same kind of flower chains Vivian learned to make when she did the Life of a Monk tour. They make it look effortless, but I know it's not.

It took a while, but we finally got out of Bangkok and onto the highway. Elena started strong,

but fell asleep after a little bit.

She woke up for our rest stop, but, luckily, we only had to stop once. Elena found an interesting bit of bench decoration.

We decided the bench in the shade was better.

My favorite part of leaving the city is when I can look at the window and know I'm in the country.

Eventually we got to the hotel. The girls had fun in the lobby while I got us checked in. As usual, Young's job was to make sure Elena didn't try and get into the water feature. All hotel lobbies in Thailand seem to have a water feature.

We got two connecting rooms for this stay, a regular double room and a one bedroom suite. We figured that would give us plenty of hang out space and separated sleep space. The living room area was nice, but our favorite part was the window seat in the double room with a fantastic view.

We saw some cool stuff out that window, like the Porsche Club members positioning their cars and themselves for an aerial photo.

The view out the king bedroom wasn't half bad either.

Jeff really liked that the sofa had an extension for his legs.

After checking out the room, we got changed and went to explore the property. There are three pools, the big lagoon one that ends in an infinity pool, and a smaller infinity pool next to the kids' pool and kids' club. They were doing some deck repairs near the smaller pools, so we only spent a little bit of time there, before heading to the big one.

We decided that the big pool was our favorite. It was really huge. The best picture of it is the one with the girls looking out the window above. It had all different kinds of sections including an aquarium,

We spent quite a bit of time at that end of the pool with Elena saying, "Hello shark, I Elena!" There was also a water slide and basketball hoop, plus several areas of hotel beach and a part of the pool that gradually sloped in off the sandy part, so there was a pretend shore.

There were some fun games to play in the sand, but there was only full shade in the afternoon. Elena's favorite part was the deck next to the sand.

This allowed her to play in the sand without actually sitting in it.

She made a lot of pool progress this trip. She found things to entertain her in the water, like lining up and counting rocks.

She got quite independent about getting in and out of the pool.

And even worked on kicking to get where she wanted to go. The big size of the pool helped with her kicking efforts. Jeff got this picture of me and Elena kicking our way to the edge of the infinity section.

We tried to get a family picture, but the wind was blowing so hard it even blew water off the edge of the pool and onto the camera.

Not that Vivian minds water.

We tried to pace ourselves and spend plenty of time in the shade.

Even Elena got her lounge on.

Despite our efforts though, everyone except Elena (who I sent up with Young at 11am) got sunburned. We blamed the sun reflecting off the water, and plan to enforce sunscreen reapplication and mid day pool breaks next time. It's a credit to the pool though that we were prepared to play there all day. Even sunburned kids can play in the kids' club though.

There were lots of fun things for Elena to play with, and Vivian had fun playing foosball with me and other people there.

We finished a great day by leaving Young and the kids in the room with food and Zootopia, while we went with our friends for dinner by the water.

The food was excellent, as was the view.

We had had a problem with flies at breakfast in the morning, but they had disappeared by dinner time. Breakfast the next morning was fly free as well. Elena really enjoyed her pancakes.