homestay

family

Koh Chang

Koh Chang Beach

(The perfect) Family Holiday in Thailand

Price per Person	From around GBP 850 (depending on the time of year)
Cost includes	2 nights at 3-star hotel, Bangkok on bed and breakfast basis 3 nights room only in Khao Sok Full day lake trip Elephant trekking and canoe trip 2 nights accommodation in village homestay including all meals, activities and a contribution to the Community Fund 6 nights on Ko Yao Island on room only basis Domestic air ticket - Bangkok/Phuket/Bangkok All transfers whilst in southern Thailand
Cost does not include	Taxi transfers between BKK airport and hotel Personal expenses Anything else not specifically mentioned above
Minimum group size	2 people Or if you're travelling alone, let us know as we occasionally have small groups operating on a similar itinerary
Starting Point	Bangkok
Start Date	Any time - subject to availability
Duration	14 days, 13 nights
Suitable For	Everyone! Especially good for first time visitors to Thailand looking for a wide range of different experiences and activities.
Trip Style	Gentle Adventure
Comfort Level	Range from basic homestays to 4 star beach hotel
Notes	ALL our trips can be tailormade to suit your specific requirements - please contact us to discuss.

What others have said about this trip...

2 words....simply incredible. Thank you for the great job you did with putting our itinerary together. People were always right where you said they would be and all our many forms of transportation were always friendly and on-time.

For me, the best part of the entire trip was sitting in the back of the truck on our way to get some AMAZING fruits (I loved the mangos and Marysol loved the trangerines) at the market with the kids from the village. It was such a surreal experience that I can't stop talking about.

Kelly brought us to the village where we stayed with Peng and her family who fed us until our stomach burst, but the food didn't get any better than her cooking for the rest of the trip. Our guide through the jungle walk at the village was Mustafa who was very knowledgable and friendly. It was some hike in that heat and his story of how the Tsunami changed his life forever really put things in perspective.

Of course, Klaus at the jungle house was an incredible experience as well. He is both personable and quite the character. The trek through the bat cave had us nervous at first but the adrenaline was pumping and it was quite the experience after we swam to the other side of the cave (another amazing adventure to make all our friends jealous about). Klaus mentioned that you checked up on us while we were there...thanks! Your description of the place was 100% and it was certainly worth it. By the way, the food... incredible... we were just wondering where the kitchen was to have such an extensive gourmet menu.

I think sleeping nights in the jungle was louder than New York City not to mention the occasional frog or tree snake hanging out by the restaurant...

Kao Yao was spectacular once you got over the fact that there was absolutely no fourth wall and that your backdrop in the morning when you woke up was sunrise over the sea. While the resort was phenomenal, I think maybe we should have done 1 day less there and 1 day more in the jungle or in Bangkok. When you are so used to the fast pace of a new adventure everyday, it is kind of hard to relax and simply do nothing...

Bottom line... don't change a thing... your description of each place is honest and they live up to their expectations. I could go on forever but in the interest of keeping this message short, I attached a few pictures from our trip.... you certainly made two supporters for both Go Differently and Thailand! Thanks for an amazing experience!
Naveen and Marysol, February 2007

After all the travelling that we did, countries we visited... I have to say that the highlight was our homestay and trip to Koh Sok and stay in the Jungle Lodge.

It all went very well, the transfers, accommodation and whole experience was fantastic!

Amandara was a lovely peaceful resort and quiet while we were there, it was just what we needed after a hectic start. The children loved scrabbling around on the beach looking for hermit crabs, iguanas, swimming in the pool. The staff were very friendly and helpful and it was an easy place to spend the first few days.

The Jungle Lodge was great. Klaus, a fab hos,t and we loved all the activities that were arranged.

Our homestay will remain the highlight, we were made to feel so welcome into the villages that we stayed and met some wonderful families. Our guide Kelly from Natr was fab, she had such a lovely relationship with the families in the villages we stayed in and made the experience very comfortable for us, helping us out with interpreting and bridging the gap with any cultural differences.

The children had a wonderful time in Tung Nam Dam, Jamie enjoyed playing football on the beach with the boys, Georgie loved feeding the goats and Iona our 5 year old made friends with our host family's nephew and they had fun catching crabs on the beach and throwing bugs on to the fire at night!

Phillip and I felt that our stay on the unspoilt island of Tung Nam Dam was more relaxing and inspirational than any 5* holiday could offer as we were transported to a world of calm and peace, made to feel so welcome by the loveliest of people.

Many thanks for all your help and look forward to hearing from you again!

Catriona and family, December 2006

The whole trip was fantastic: excellent diving, then a wonderful homestay ( the fish farm family were great and the fish farmitself was fascinating). Our guide was a star and we did all the things on the itinerary and narrowly missed seeing some manatees! Trec staff were welcoming and inspiring: our eldest may well spend a bit of her gap year ot there. The jungle was fab and we saw all a far amount of wildlife. Thanks for all your help in organisation and ideas. We will watch your web-site with interest

Jane and family, August 2006

We had a GREAT time!!!! Everything was exactly like you said it would be. Everything went as planned. It was fun, beautiful, peaceful and perfect! I also wish we would have had more time with the Elephants. They were adorable. I think sometime I would like to go back and work with the elephants. Everything else was perfect. The rooms everywhere we went were awesome! The staff was always friendly. We all especially loved Klaus's jungle house. That was really wonderful! He is great! Thank you, thank you, thank you for putting together such a fantastic trip for us! We are telling everyone about it. I already have two people thinking about going in Nov.

Heather and friends, December 2006

Throughout the holiday, Steve and I kept saying ‘we must remember to thank Nikki for that’, or ‘it was really good that Nikki knew about this’ or ‘Nikki chose this place really well’ so I have been cataloguing everything in my head ready to send this email!

We really had the most fantastic time. Steve and I both felt that it was the best holiday we had ever been on and when we thought about what could have made it better, we couldn’t think of anything we would have changed. Most of this was down to the fact that you recommended some really fantastic places to go, and we definitely felt as though we got way off the beaten track. In fact, we hardly saw any other tourists between Bangkok and Ko Yao which was perfect! The only time we did get a flavour for what Mass tourism does to a place was when we took a boat trip from Ko Yao to some of the small islands opposite the beach, and it wasn’t great. There were loads of people there for the beer and sunbathing rather than for the spectacular scenery.

Anyway, where to start. Bangkok was an amazing city. Vibrant, bustling, exciting, energetic and exhausting. We were really glad we went, but equally were glad we were just there for a couple of days. The hotel was great – good central location and just what we needed to explore the city and get over our jet lag. After the flight to Phuket we were collected by the guys from Our Jungle House no problem, and were completely overwhelmed by the place – it was so beautiful and so in the middle of amazing nature and scenery. We just felt it was a perfect place to stay, and seemed lots nicer than any of the other places in Khao Sok.

The one day lake trip was one of the highlights of the trip. We were lucky because we didn’t meet anyone else there for the entire day, and were really pleased it was just the two of us and our guide, who was really lovely. He gave us a great introduction to the jungle, and we saw all sorts of nature – monkeys, lizards, eagles, bats, toads and giant spiders! I have pretty bad arachnophobia and Klaus had warned me about the cave – I don’t know whether you know but half way through the trek you go through this amazing cave for about an hour. It was sensational – loads of stalactites and stalacmites, big chambers, loads of bats, swimming through the river in the pitch black, climbing through rocks, but it also had the biggest spiders we had ever seen all over the rocks. I came face to face with my fear, but survived – just! Very exhilarating and an amazing experience, but pretty scary for me.

Elephant trekking and canoeing were equally great. We saw lots of Mangrove snakes which was exciting!

Then on to Kuraburi and the Homestay. Again, we were picked up no problem and arrived on time to meet Kelly, who we got on really well with. She came with us to the Homestay, which was really good as our family didn’t speak much English. This was another real highlight – the family and the island – Tung Nam Dam were both fantastic. The family were incredibly welcoming and it was fascinating spending a few days with them. For me, the food was brilliant because I love cooking so I spent a bit of time with the Mum, watching her cook and getting some tips! She even cooked us fresh crab and red snapper from her fish farm.

The snorkling day was a real highlight for this part of the trip – we set off with Kelly, and our guides, and half the family, and half their friends and relatives – it just felt like a big family outing rather than a trip that they were putting on just for us, which was great! We also enjoyed the deserted beach where one of the guys cut down some fresh young coconuts and we spent the evening watching the sunset and drinking fresh coconut milk. All brilliant.

And then Ko Yao island. We were overwhelmed! We arrived tired and muddy from our trip, to the most amazing luxury. It was absolutely beautiful and couldn’t have been a more perfect place to spend the second week of our holiday. It was absolutely perfect. All week we were saying how much we loved it – it was very natural, unspoilt and in tune with the surroundings. We thought it was nice, for example, that you couldn’t really see the resort from the boat as you approach the beach. We made the most of the spa, as well as taking one day trip out, fishing, and exploring a little of the island on scooter!

In fact, it was all so romantic that Steve proposed to me, on our second to last day, on the beach at night, lit up only by an amazing electrical storm – very romantic and the perfect story to come home with! So thank you for helping to create the perfect setting for an amazing memory for me!

So we really do feel we have a lot to thank you for Nikki. We really appreciated all your hard work that went into the itinerary and planning, and also all your knowledge of the best places to visit, as we were certain that it would have been a very different trip without that.

We’ve already recommended you to loads of people, including a girl we befriended in the airport, so hopefully we have helped you a tiny bit too!

Thanks again Nikki. We’d definitely consider using you again in the future – maybe for the honeymoon!

Rebekah and Steve, Tailor-made Thailand, November 2006

What a wonderful trip we had… truly a great and a varied adventure. We are jet lagged still but very glad to have gone.

Khao Sok was really special. The guides and staff were wonderful, friendly and knowledgeable. We saw and heard a lot of wildlife… and the food in the little floating restaurant was as good as anyplace and we really felt like were on an adventure... climbing up waterfalls, listening to the gibbons calling in the morning... kayaking thru such pristine wilderness...

We were then delighted to leave our basic bungalow to go then to the Island resort at Koh Yao to be pampered… what a fabulous pick for us… so serene and lovely… incredibly attentive and lovely staff, picture post card setting. One of their staff guides took us all around the island to see the rice paddies, the fishing villages, the rubber plantations and life as it used to be… he was SO lovely to be with!

In the main you put together a marvelous smorgasbord of settings and experiences. We came away refreshed and energized and having learned so very much from our lovely guides. The Thais are as advertised such a very accessible people... we were quite moved, really.

It was a total pleasure working with you and I will most definitely recommend your service. You were very attentive to all the details that
matttered. Thanks so very much!

Tailor-made Thailand, Susie and Gil, October 2006