Sofitel Krabi Phokeethra – Luxury Sofitel Resort‎

The long waited 5-Star Resort Stay was finally here. The real reason shall be hidden within.

The purpose of this trip has been centralized around this hotel. This was the first hotel booking I made and it had been strongly recommended by Onew’s SHINee One Fine Day Krabi Adventure. Yes, this was the exact hotel (room) which Onew Stayed at in this resort which holds the largest swimming pool in Thailand.

What a perfect chance it was for me to officiate mr Pretzel & ms Donut’s virgin use in the largest pool in Thailand.

Once we alighted from the vehicle, the bellboy proactively took our luggage away even though we said it was okay. We walked into the lobby, which felt rather palace-like with the huge daybeds.

We were then given welcome drinks, a cold towel and a bouquet of 5 pandan roses each!

I wasn’t familiar with the way the front desk functions and I kept walking up to the reservation counter only to be directed back to the daybed. I guess their sofitel experience was that the guest remain seated in the comfortable chairs and the staff would walk from the counter to and fro to assist you with your check-in. To be honest, it felt a little inefficient (walked a few times to take my booking, collect our passports, return our passports, pass us the keys) but I guess they wanted you to feel like a king and be waited upon =p

It was a great pleasure to see that my special request has been met. I had specially contacted their personal via Facebook to find out if room 267 was superior or luxury. Then, I proceeded to request for this specific room in my booking reservation. Thankfully it was off-peak and we were able to get the room.

One hotel staff would accompany you from the lobby to your room and advise you on the offerings of their hotel. Although I would like to give them 10/10 for effort, I have to discount a little as they acted like they were just trying to recite their memorized script. There was less/almost none personal touch to the recitation. I guess we gotta be more understanding as they are still in the process of picking up more English as tourism expands in their country.

Yes the bed is rather biggggggggggggggggggggggg. I think it was King Size, or even bigger.

Sofitel is one of the brand that provides Loccitane Shower & Soap in their bathroom! I really love the smell of their soap and shampoo! Also, they kind of have orchids randomly everywhere in the room =p

 

Well, we didn’t have much time to nua around.. it was time to pump the homogeneous float I bought and brought all the way to this special hotel with the largest swimming pool in thailand.

Thanks to my super supportive friends and a combined effort of 3 people and my amazing pump and binder clip, we managed to pump up both floats in about an hours time.

Before & After

 

** Click here if you would like to rent my awesome mr Pretzel & ms Donut pool floats **

Now that the floats are done, we are ready to play in the pool!

(Photos were taken on iPhone5 using waterproof casing. With the casing, I was able to carry my phone throughout my entire swim in the water)

Can you spot the hammock at the coconut trees?

Many people have asked on whether the pretzel can fit two people.. yes it CAN!

An idea of how large the pool is.

There’s also a jaccuzi area which urm we didn’t use because we were too distracted with the delicious-looking floats.

(Ignore the dark clouds) there was also a mini slide and some nets for water polo games.

and then we discovered something special about this resort.. there were random hammocks on the coconut trees! and yes these hammocks have a special meaning for us =p

You do not always have to sleep on the hammock. You can use it as a swing as well!

Swinging around can be really fun too =p

The hammock was so comfortable that I just laid there and stare at the sky. Any longer I would have fallen asleep.. It could have been a good stargazing location if it didn’t rain that night

While we played on the hammocks, I discovered my floats were being taken away by other kids in the pool. It was alright. I hope they have taken awesome photos with it too.

After the play at the pool and hammock, we decided to walk to the beach in an attempt to watch the sunset.

The beach was not a private beach and you would have to cross a (busy) road to get to the beach in just a few steps. The reason behind the busy road with heavy vehicles was due to the mining location towards the right side of the beach. I guess if you have kids, you got to be really careful when crossing the road.

There were beach chairs available on the beach for us to lounge and relax.

Despite the failed attempt of watching the sunset, it was a peaceful evening for pinee, paddington and duffy the bear. It was quiet, windy, calming and perfect.

 

And above all, social media + data trashes everything else.

After a awhile, it started to drizzle and we had to go back to the hotel.

The most important task I had after all that play was to rinse my float properly with clean water. These floats aren’t cheap and of course I would like them to last for a long time..

Well, I never understood the idea of translucent or transparent toilets but it seems like the norm in higher grade resorts. Thankfully in this hotel room, it wasn’t too bad. It was only translucent and urm, you can actually open from outside but.. mutual trust is important.

True to our predictions, it started pouring like crazy once the sky darkens. Well, I don’t blame the weather. It was already a blessing that it didn’t rain during the day. My initial concern was that the rain might spoil all our plans but thankfully it didn’t.

We went to the very grand hotel lobby for photo taking and also to return the polaroid photo I found on the grass patch at the hammock.

And my slight displeasure with the hotel begins. There was no one present at the front desk and we had to call for attention and they came out from the room behind the front desk counters. The staff who attended to us couldn’t understand why I passed the polaroid photo to her. I told her that I found it at the grass patch near the swimming pool and perhaps they could return to the owner (in the photo) when he checks out. Well, i passed the photograph to her anyways.

Next, we wanted to ask for a first aid box or for some help to remove a splinter from my friend’s finger. After a series of mis-communications, she gave us a plaster form the first-aid room. My friend already had a plaster on.

It’s abit upsetting to realise that the english standard wasn’t sufficient for these scenarios. Furthermore, she was the only one at the counter and it didn’t seem like she had anyone else to ask for help or maybe she didn’t make an effort to.

We then proceeded to the bookings counter to ask where were the restaurants that we could dine in. The guy then started his “perfectly memorized” script in sharing the cuisines and restaurants location. However, there was an external event going on that night and all restaurants were closed except for the italian restaurant. We went to every single restaurant (alright only two) to discover that they were not available for us.

This was the entrance of one of the restaurant that wasn’t available.

Right, so we ended up at the Italian restaurant which we were informed by a staff at the other restaurant that they will be serving both italian and thai menus that night. and so I looked at the thai menu and wanted to eat Mango Sticky Rice because it was the only thing that I wanted to it. If not for that Mango Sticky Rice in the menu, I wouldn’t have walked in. Well, the dear waitresses only informed me that Mango Sticky Rice was not available after I called them to place the order. *Please imagine the amount of disappointment I had when she told me that* We had such a hard time choosing other dishes to order. really hard.

AND this restaurant does not serve ice water. Maybe it’s a common trend in thailand and we paid urm $6-8 SGD for two bottles of distilled water. It wasn’t even mineral water.

The only comfort we had after all the displeasure was the free bread.

We ordered soft shell crab and pineapple fried rice. Nothing else in the (priced) menu caught my attention.

Went back to the room after dinner as we couldn’t find anything to do or walk about due to the rain.

The only thing that I had in mind that moment was… to deflate my floats

With the help of my amazing binder clips, the task was completed in 20 minutes or so for both floats!

Ended the night with the beer and chips that I’ve bought from 7-11. There wasn’t any flavour I particularly liked except for that sparkling red wine which I randomly took.

We spent the whole night discussing about our old idols *ahem fahrenheit and their iMM autograph sessions and then it was followed up by watching their live performances on youtube. it was a night filled with laughter and laughter and laughter until we found ourselves on the quite comfortable bed..

I set an alarm at 5 plus 6am to attempt to catch the sunrise. I walked out of my room to the extremely quiet lobby, took a photo, concluded that it was cloudy, and went back to sleep.

Buffet Breakfast was pretty decent and there were many counters but I had to restrict myself as I can’t exactly overeat right now.

After breakfast, we went back to the hotel room and pack everything up and took some last photos at the lobby. At that moment, I really wished I could stay for one more night but 300 SGD/night was not very affordable for a budget traveler like me…

With the pandan bouquets in our hands, we took the final photo before leaving this awesome place. mr Driver was early but patient in waiting for us as we bid farewell to this place. Thumbs up to the good and expensive taxi service in Krabi.

🙂