Lady Sarojin Sunset Cruise and shipwreck dinner, Khao Lak, Thailand

In the order of romance, certain sacrifices need to be made. I am usually all in, so the sacrifices are generally made by my wonderful cherry babe, who was bravely going along with this whole ‘honeymoon thing’.

We were actually on our honeymoon, so romantic activities are generally expected, although I tried to make my expectations as painless as possible for him. Turns out he is quite good at ‘romance’ and even I liked it a little bit more than I thought, but when you are doing a private Lady Sarojin sunset cruise and ‘shipwreck’ dinner on a secluded beach, with absolutely exceptional food, it is hard not to enjoy the mood.

We were revelling in our role as happy honeymooners at The Sarojin in Khao Lak (Thailand) and the ‘Lady Sarojin Sunset Cruise and Shipwrecked Private Dinner‘ was one of our optional extras.

It came with a bit of anxious anticipation, as the weather wasn’t looking crash hot… late afternoon thunderstorms are pretty common, but fear not… I had enlisted the services of my ‘weather fairy’ who did not let us down for the entirety of the trip.

We headed off on the Lady Sarojin, the resort’s private luxury boat at about 4pm and made our way north across the azure expanse of the Andaman Sea towards Ko Kho Khao, an island that after a meander up the Pak Ko, we returned to for dinner.

Small tip… don’t bother going to a lot of trouble with your hair… the sea breeze, humidity and boat g-forces will make a mess of it regardless of the direction you face, so just set it free… or tie it back… whatever…

The waterway was essentially uninhabited with the exception of a few fishing gypsy shanties that were made out of a kaleidoscope of scrap metal, which was quite rustically beautiful in its own way, especially considering that in 2004 this whole region was all but wiped out by the Boxing Day Tsunami that devastated this entire coastline.

While the tsunami was almost 10 years prior to our visit, the scars are still evident both on the landscape and in the minds of the beautiful people we met, who are all in some way still healing. With this in mind, the hospitality, optimism, kindness and positivity that locals show, is quite humbling.

We navigated our way around the waterway past Bang Muang, a small fishing village and between a medley of quirky boats – the ones with the dozens of oversized hanging glass bulbs are apparently squid fishing boats.

Sparkling wine in hand we asked 101 questions, finding out as much about the region and all of the villagers as we could. Fortunately our host had a better grasp of the English language than we had of Thai!

As we turned around and began to make our way back to our dinner destination, the sunset started to do its thing… wow… just stunning. The storms that had threatened earlier had cast an incredible hue over the landscape, turning the rainforests iridescent green. A hazy mist of low clouds shrouded the mountains in the distance on one side and magenta, ginger and yellow mingled with residual storm clouds, which reflected on the Andaman, on the other… wow!

In the distance, getting closer, was our little island destination. We could see our shipwreck ‘stylists’ adding their final touches… the draped white fabric on our personalised bamboo pavilion billowing gently in the breeze… candles and lanterns flickering… we even had small lanterns arranged in a heart shape on the sand…

By the time we stepped onto our little private sand bar, the advancing twilight shades were at its best and we settled in on a pair of lounges, and admired a lustrous blushing horizon in its final stages of darkening glory.

The pina coladas served in pineapples were pretty good too…

Our chef Jo, was a chef on loan from The Sarojin’s Edge Restaurant and our host for the evening was Sea, both of whom made the experience such a joy. We quite enjoyed chatting with them, and we both had a quiet giggle listening to Sea tell us the story of his name. Apparently his name is actually ‘C’… he has two brothers ‘A’ and ‘B’, and so to add his own sense of individuality, he changed the spelling, he tells us as he points to the sea. I love the simplicity of this. We had both often wondered if this was the case as we came across so many locals whose names were as simple as one letter. What better way to know the order of your children! While I am sure this is not always the case with single letter names, it did make me wonder about ‘M’ and ‘X’ and I silently hoped that they had taken first and second cousins into the equation in the order of their naming!

Jo was cooking us a BBQ banquet… it looked pretty amazing. We scanned a table that almost reached the horizon line itself filled with all sorts of goodies! Satays and marinated beef, chicken and pork, with various dipping sauces, Phuket lobster and other morsels of seafood, all grilled on the BBQ, while we sipped on more sparkling wine. Incidentally, The Sarojin has a pretty impressive wine list, which has won quite a few awards, however, (woefully) we had had a bit of a ‘big’ night the night before and so we were quietly recovering with a substantially larger ratio of water this fine evening.

We also had a nibble of some spring rolls, crispy prawns and a delicious simmered chicken with galangal. Let me just say that there was no shortage of food and we continually said ‘yes please’ to more food when we should have been saying ‘no thank you’. We finished off with fruit back on our lounges (we were too full to move) the sea gently lapping on the shores, candles flickering…

The evening ended with us releasing a Thai Lantern or ‘wish lantern’ as they are sometimes known. So from the centre of our sparkling heart in the sand we lit our lantern and set it free into the dark night to inspire the Gods or ‘wish fairies’ to bring us some additional good luck and happy wishes. The lanterns are HUGE by the way! We could have had a shower inside! I was quite amazed as to how big they were, which would explain why you can see them from miles off!

Feeling blessed (and incredibly full) we were now ready to head back to the resort (before we fell into a food coma), so Sea called for the car to meet us at Bang Muang and helped us onto a traditional longtail boat which took us across to the mainland to our awaiting car and home.

If there is just one special dinner that you do while visiting The Sarojin Resort at Khao Lak, make it this one. It does come with a price, but it will be one of the more memorable dinners you will ever have, and we both felt it was worth it. I loved the intimacy. I say this as a couple and also with our host and chef. The kindness and care they showed us, as their guests, was just lovely and made for a very special evening. Thank you Sea and Jo.