Unique Honeymoons in Thailand
Simply, Thailand offers couples so much choice for personalising their honeymoon, allowing you to escape from the beach as well as to it.
It might be staying as the guests of a hill tribe in a remote rice harvesting community, receiving a blessing from a monk at a mountainside temple or camping in the middle of a rainforest in a tent floating over a lake.
The list for unique travelling tour would give you deep impression:
Stay on a floating camp in tropical rainforest
Within an hour of Khao Lak, you can camp in the heart of the Khao Sok National Park, surrounded by limestone rock faces, coconut mangroves and the call of wildlife at Elephant Hills Tented Camp.
The experience feels intrepid — and there are very few other travellers around — but this is far from roughing it. The safari-style tents are simple in design and run on solar-powered electricity, but come with a four-poster bed, en suite facilities and a hot shower.
A two-night stay to allow you time to encounter fully the resident elephants, survivors of the country’s logging trade brought here for rehabilitation and, in the process, to educate visitors on the animal’s plight in Thailand.
Other activities include canoeing down the Sok River and trekking into the jungle with your rangers, who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the wildlife and will gladly lead you in search of any particular species you want to find.
As a honeymooner, you can spend your second night in the Rainforest Camp, sleeping in one of the ten tents that float on the Cheow Larn Lake, enclosed by the jungle. This is where you’ll gain your best chance of spotting the rainforest’s wildlife, sighting kingfishers, hornbills and troops of gibbons from your tent.
You can jump straight into the clear water to swim from your tent deck and use your personal kayak to meander through the river’s tributaries.
Explore Phang Nga Bay by sea kayak
Back on the Andaman coast, a two to two-and-a-half hour drive from the Khao Sok National Park, Phang Nga Bay is the archetypal Thai seascape. Top-heavy limestone pinnacles look like they’re balancing in the water and limestone rock faces give structure to coves, lagoons and sea caves.
Hill tribe stay
Staying as the guests of the H’mong and Lahu hill tribes on Thailand’s remote northern border isn’t an obvious experience for honeymooners. Yet, I feel it works really well if you’re open to entering into the ancient culture of Thailand’s minority hill tribes.
Lanjia Lodge is built on the shoulder of a hill near Chiang Khong in Thailand’s Golden Triangle.
This is no ordinary hotel. The lodge is run by the local tribespeople, with a percentage of the profits reinvested into the community. The accommodation is in wooden stilted huts, set in what seems like the middle of nowhere, overlooking a valley across to the Mekong River and the Laos border.
You’ll have the opportunity to learn about the tribes’ traditional customs, meeting the local shaman and trying your hand at Batik painting, a traditional craft using wax to resist dye on fabric to create colourful and intricate designs.
There are also some great bicycle routes you can take through the rural landscape of rice paddies intersected by rivers.
Cruise along the Chao Phraya River on a converted rice barge
Honeymoons usually start in Bangkok, and I’d suggest an evening dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya River aboard a converted rice barge to mark the start of your honeymoon. It’s an atmospheric, blatantly romantic in fact, introduction to the city.
As dusk sets on the city, you’re served a traditional Thai dinner — dishes of Pad Thai and red and green curries. It’s then time for evening entertainment, as dancers perform traditional Thai dances with ballet-like elegance.
Private Thai blessing
Receiving a Thai blessing is one experience I’d really recommend if you’re looking for a special moment but with some authenticity.
Staying in the north of Thailand, ‘the temple on the mountain’ looks out over the whole of Chiang Mai and the encasing hills from its position close to the summit of Doi Suthep. You can go inside the temple, but the site’s majesty is in the view.
You can arrange a private blessing by a monk at dusk at the temple, when it’s at its most atmospheric in the cooler and evening calm. The monks’ evening chanting was like nothing I’d ever heard before.
Six Senses, Yao Noi
The Six Senses Resort, on the island of Yao Noi, is ultimate honeymoon destination. Luxurious pool villas are set into the hillside, looking out toward the Andaman coastline.
Yao Noi is very undeveloped, and the resort stands alone on that stretch of the island. The service is second to none, and movies are screened at the evening cinema on the beach. I can’t think of a better place to end your honeymoon.
