Mai Khao Lak Beach Resort and Spa

We stayed one week at Mai Khao Lak and it was almost five star-getaway. The beach was absolutely perfect: white sand, crystal blue ocean and very, very quiet... only few people there if any. Pool activities and evening program for kids were really nice. We enjoyed those a lot - both the adults and the kids. Pool area was amazing and huge and you could choose whether to take sun and have fun in the children’s area or enjoy your own time at perfectly quiet adult zone. Superb! Only one thing concerned us during our holiday. The ants. We had serious problems with ants in our room (they were literally all over the room) and we had to change our room three times before we got room which had no ants-problem. Staff dealt with this situation pretty well, we got apologies and voucher to their evening-buffee to whole family. Only thing which made me bit upset was hotel manager’s first reaction to this: ”I bet it’s your kids who have eaten cookies in the bed and that’s why the ants came.” Oh, okey... first: we haven’t eat anything in our hotel room and second: even if we had, does that mean that it was our fault that ants came? Nobody said you cannot eat anything in your room or otherwise you are screwed with ants... well, this was only one thing and after that everything went nice. Buildings are quite old though and in many places in pretty poor condition, you can see it everywhere you go. Also they weren’t so clean what we expected; there were dead butterflies, cockroaches, spiders, ants etc at the corridos near rooms... luckily almost everyone of them were dead! Because of these we give this hotel four stars instead of five. We ate couple of times at hotel’s restaurants. Food wasn’t anything spectacular, really basic food with high prizes. I recommend you to go to the wonderful beach restaurants after the old and scary wooden bridge. There you can eat really authentic and excellent thai food with super cheap prizes (2-6euros). The food was best we have ever eaten in Thailand! Service was also excellent and they have everything for the kids (toys, swings, funny straws, even free deserts etc). You can enjoy your dinner with wonderful sunset. At Mai Khao Lak staff were very friendly though rarely nobody spoke english (except hotel manager who had really fluent english skills and he was also really helpful and friendly and always asked how we were doing). Medusa burned our 2-year old and we got really great service and treatment from staff. It was very important that there were doctor in the hotel area, too. We visited there couple of times and after that medusa-accident doctor even called us to our hotel room three times just to make sure everything went well with our daughter. Loved it! Staff gave us drive with golf car to our room every time we wanted and that was really great because our room located quite far away from the beach. Our children loved that! Overall we would come back because the place itself was so nice, like paradise, and the pool area was absolutely the best we have ever been (and we have visited in Thailand many times before). Despite this problem with ants and some buildings’ poor condition we enjoyed a lot our stay in Mai Khao Lak and would recommend this place especially for families. :)

This resort is very relaxing and overall good value for the deal we got. The rooms and resort were very clean although the room cleaners do a minimal job. The pools are only 1.2m deep which is good for kids but shallow if you are tall. The restaurants need looking at and management should take more notice of this, it took over 1 hour to get food and then you might get three courses at once, the staff at the Green and Grill are incompetent. Breakfast was good, and most staff pleasant.