It was rather a tortuous journey… 
but not due to the route, the resort or airline… due to me! Ever since working at the Amari I had been determined to visit the five star Amari Trang Beach Resort. Having worked on the marketing for it I was really keen to experience the Resort first hand – I knew already that it was going to be somewhere special…
So, I planned ahead and booked a long weekend for our anniversary. I booked the flights, I booked the hotel and we both booked a day off work. Two days before I confirmed the flight details to Andreas, the charming General Manager at the Resort. A slight technical hitch had come up – yes, I had booked the flights, but to the wrong airport – oops! We were booked to fly to Trat instead of Trang. Now fortunately there is a lovely Amari resort on Koh Chang also – so we had our anniversary weekend at the Amari Emerald Cove Resort instead. (And, that’s a lovely resort too by the way, with a spectacular swimming pool and a lovely spa.)
So, finally, we rebooked for the holiday weekend of Makha Bucha – flights had booked up quickly so we had to take what was left which meant flying to Trang on Friday evening and flying back from Krabi on Monday morning. We flew air miles with Thai air but, in fact, the route to Trang (which is only 20 mins from the resort) has now been taken over by Nok Air. Enough of our travel arrangements… suffice to say that we finally arrived at the Resort at around 9.30 pm – just in time for cocktails in their lovely bar. We were fortunate enough to have been upgraded to one of their spectacular suites – oooh it was glorious! Two interconnecting rooms with one of those glass sliding doors on to the bathroom and an interconnected balcony overlooking the beach side of the resort and the swimming pool to one side. We felt suitably spoiled and pampered before we’d even started!
Our Saturday morning started with breakfast on the balcony… fresh coffee and croissants as we inspected the sky which was a little grey and was threatening rain. 
An opportune time, then, to visit the Sivara Spa and explore the resort itself. The spa is what you would expect at a five star resort, and the prices were reasonable too – we both had a body scrub and massage and desperately tried not to relax so much that we fell asleep and missed any of the pampering! As we glided blissfully back to the pool bar for some salad and some fresh juice (or was that a beer…) the noise and pollution of Bangkok felt a million miles away. The resort is set right next to national marine park land so to get to the beach we walked through a narrow wooded area before we parked up on the resort’s loungers. The beach here is completely empty save for Amari guests and some fishermen off in the distance. From there there’s a lovely view of a crop of limestone islands aka Krabi with the islands of Koh Muk and Koh Kradan off to the left. Saturday night was spent at a window seat in the modern and stylish Aqua Italian restaurant where we enjoyed a lovely bottle of red wine (the wine list is excellent) and an excellent meal.
Sunday we were up bright and early to do the island trip on the resort’s private catamaran. First, a trip to the harbour area to pick up the boat and then we were headed out to Koh Muk to swim through the famous Emerald Cave. I’ve wanted to do this ever since I read about it when we first came to Thailand – what I didn’t realize was that the cave you swim through is pitch black for a fair way so it is handy to wear the life jackets and follow the guide! I could see why no boats can go through… My camera was taken through in a waterproof bag with the guide and, yes, it did survive intact but sadly the sun wasn’t shining on the righteous… so as you may have guessed, I didn’t enter Emerald Cave pictures in the photo competition! After that it was time for snorkeling at another island and then on to Koh Kradan where the Amari has a private beach club to keep you away from the hoi polloi!
The beaches on Koh Kradan are famous in Thailand as being some of the finest – and it certainly is a beautiful beach,
made even nicer by the luxury of the beach club where you can have a relaxing lunch, a few beers and then a couple of hours on their sun loungers… or in our case a couple of hours watching the most amazing rain storm pass over the islands in the distance. Luckily we only ended up with a smattering of rain on Koh Kradan before we set off for home. You don’t have to do the full island tour (if you done many before you may prefer not too… though Emerald Cave is amazing if you’ve not done the swim through before) – to be honest, you end up at the same snorkeling spots as everyone else so it’s a bit of a bun fight in the water. The resort runs a fast shuttle to Koh Kradan every day (weather permitting) or you can take a long boat over. I would definitely recommend going to the beach club…
Sadly our weekend was nearly at an end… we finished up with a Thai meal followed by digestifs at the lovely Beach Bar while we watched movie night – Casablanca (Roger’s favourite movie of all time) – on a big screen in the bar. The next morning we were up bright and early to drive up to Krabi airport to fly back to Bangkok – a colleague from Roger’s office took us on the ‘rally’ ride up there so it only took one hour… but it should probably have been 1 ½ hours! Nevertheless it’s still an easy transfer.
It’s a fabulous resort in a stunning location!