Honeymoon Part 2 – Paradise at the Sarojin

Probably the most stressful part of the wedding for me was organising the honeymoon! It was one of the few ‘real’ jobs I was given (note the word given) besides choosing the food menu, sorting mine and the best mens suits, and, erm…. turning up.

I figured I could look at the honeymoon two ways; 1) that I was organising a regular (all be it pricey) holiday, or 2) that I was organising probably the most expensive holiday we will ever go on, after the most memorable day we will ever have, with a new wife who will expect the most amazing place she has ever seen. I chose the 2nd train of thought…. no pressure then Andrew!

The first thing I noticed is that anything even slightly related to a wedding and you need to add an extra 50% to the price! Everything is so expensive; some places I saw in Mauritius and the Seychelles were just astronomical. Luckily I found a real bargain at the Sarojin resort in Khoa Lak, Thailand (Buy 3 nights, get free nights free). It certainly sounded too good to be true….but it wasn’t!

The resort is located on a stretch of beach in Khoa Lak (Just North of Phuket) in Thailand and has won numerous awards over the last few years… it’s easy to see how.

The service that we received at the Sarojin was just out of this world – from the second we arrived everything was just perfect. On arrival we were greeted by the amazing staff who had pre prepared a pot of ginger tea, cool towels for our face and even had a bouquet of flowers ready for Susie.

We were showed to our room and things just got better and better! The staff had written the words ‘happy honeymoon’ in petals on the bed sheets, prepared a fresh petal bath, and the piece de résistance – a chilled bottle of champagne!

We were lucky enough to have a ’pool residence’ so we were quickly dipping into our beautiful PRIVATE pool, and ordering in room service on our pavilion. I have to admit, the beef carpacchio certainly wasn’t the most traditional food we would eat in Thailand, but it was bloody good!

Thai Cooking Class

One of the highlights of the week was when we took a Thai cooking class in the resort. I had taken a Thai cooking class back in 2006 on Koh Phi Phi, but this turned out to be much more interesting AND we cooked in a fantastic venue over looking the beach.

The class started with a guided tour of a local Thai market by our chef (called Gog), who talked us through all the weird and wonderful ingredients that are used in Thai cooking…. many of which I confess to never having seen before.

After we had bought the ingredients for our menu (chosen the night before) we arrived at the venue to see all our ingredients and cooking equipment nicely laid out for us. Now I’m not going to go into too much detail as I will be posting these recipes in future posts, but here were the dishes we cooked (and ate!!!) with some photo’s below:

• Spring Rolls with Sweet Chilli Dip
• Corn Cakes
• Thai Red Chicken Curry
• Massaman Beef Curry
• Seafood Soup
• Prawn Soup

There was far too much food to eat – we ended up giving half of it away to the waitresses behind the bar!

Finally, on our last night we had a private meal set up on a platform in the middle of the gorgeous infinity swimming pool. It was a fantastic evening, and having a private waiter for the night made it all the more special! I finally got chance to have my seafood dinner, and Susie went for her staple meal in Thailand – Thai Green Curry!

That’s all from Thailand – next post I’ll be sharing some of my experiences from Penang, including some of the fantastic hawker street food!