Relax! This is a vaction after all!!

I am actually writing this AFTER the 5 days in Krabi, so I have a tear running down my eye. The time was great.....

We travelled from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Krabi and then took the hotel shuttle bus to the Sheraton Krabi Beach Resort where we would spend the next few days relaxing as we wound down the trip. Mark had been to this resort before, and when he was travelling last, they upgraded him to the nicest room in the hotel, because of his Starwood Platinum status. Somehow he was able to pull some strings and get the same amazing suite at the hotel. It had a sitting room and bedroom, divided by a full height sliding paneled door, 2 bathrooms, and a balcony (where we had an amazing dinner...more later on that) with sunbathing chairs and umbrella. Just great.

We walked around the hotel and had a late lunch at one of the many resort restaurants (with an amazing view of the ocean), and then rested before going into town to Ao Nang. The resort is actually between the 2 towns of Ao Nang and Krabi, so it's nicely secluded and away from business. But, we headed into town to grab some dinner and shop at the little stores and stalls along the beach strip. We walked into a CD/DVD store just minutes after getting busted by the police (and watched them bag up tons of DVDs that had been pirated). (FYI - If you choose to buy pirated DVD's, you run the risk of buying crappy copies, hardly worth watching, along with the illegal aspect, of course.) Anyway, the town was fun, and we got out just as it was starting to pour down rain!

The next couple days were spent just relaxing at the resort. They recently built another pool, so we spent a few hours there there most days. It's also just a short walk to the beach. Gorgeous! The resort also has a baby elephant named RaRa in residence, and they have a morning time with him where you can feed him bananas and hang out, and an afternoon time for the same and to help give him a bath in the ocean. I got to have a ride on RaRa for a few minutes, which was really cool. One of the hotel bars named Martini's had a happy hour with 2 for 1 drinks, so we caught a couple sunsets there as well.

One day we ventured to the town of Krabi, which was actually a bust. It's the main area where you can catch a boat to other islands, but the main town was terribly sleepy and no real souvenir shopping. Our recommendation - skip it!

A final highlight for this part of our stay was the offer to have a balcony barbecue at our suite. It's only reserved for the few rooms that have the patios, and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and do it! We had a 9 course meal with appetizers, salad, 5 courses of meat including lamb, fillet, pork, chicken, prawns, and rice and then dessert! Mark had told the coordinator beforehand that my favorite dessert was mango with sticky rice and coconut ice cream, and although it wasn't on the normal BBQ menu, they came through for me! I was in heaven. We watched the sun set from our balcony as we were served our dinner. We had a BBQ chef, another chef, and a waiter....All for us! It was amazing.

We could have spent another week at the resort hanging out, reading more books and just relaxing. It was perfect and just what we needed.