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Jackman Travels
Boy oh boy, we love it here. We've come back to Sensi Paradise resort, Ko Tao, the location of our first ever holiday as a couple a few years ago. It was wonderful then, so it seemed a good idea to spend the last week or so of our honeymoon somewhere we could rely on. And somewhere rather more swanky than places we've been staying recently...
We arrived with some worries- in the three year interim, would Ko Tao have become over-developed and would Sensi Paradise have become similarly spoiled? The short answer to both is 'no'. Sensi has undergone some work, building a few new bungalows, upgrading some
existing ones to aircon, moving the reception desk to a really daft location up a hill and building a swimming pool. None of these is a terrible thing. The pool's very nice, though we'd rather lie on the private beach with glorious sea in front of us (at least other people use the pool, though, so the beach is quieter). Bizarrely, we're paying less now than three years ago for the same room (well, the room next door but it's identical and has a better view) and we got upgraded to an aircon room for free (honeymoon!) for half the stay as the one we wanted wasn't available. That said, we actually prefer the cheaper room (35) to the aircon one (13) - aircon is nothing compared to a jungle/cliff-side location with bed indoors and a daybed outdoors. The perfect sundowner location.
The rooms are certainly in the thick of nature - and that's a key part of their charm. Not only are we surrounded by the sounds of the jungle (the chorus of cicadas at sundown is near-deafening!) we also had a night-time visitor to our bathroom who had a penchant for soap. Halfway through the night, Suzie got up and found the bar with teeth marks... and by morning, the whole thing had vanished!
From what we've seen, the island hasn't changed all that much. Maybe there just isn't space in the port town for much development, or maybe there are strict rules. Whatever, it's good. The only change we rue is the closure of Villa Magenta, our favourite restaurant, right on the front, to be turned into yet another massge shop. Idiots. Still, we've worked tirelessly to find a replacement, and we really like the Royal Resort (right next to Sensi but with food half the price) and Paprika (almost in town, on the front, nice curry- and we didn't mind getting the starters half an hour after the mains).
And what have we done? Well, apart from an excellent amount of sitting, we've been diving twice. We did a day trip of two dives at Chumphorn Pinnacle with Golden Divers and spent a morning at Twin Peaks and White Rock with Blue Diamond. Between them, we've seen huge triggerfish, loads of angel fish, eels, almost unbelievably large groupers and more. Neither of us had any problems with our ears and generally we're so much more confident (and competent) than we were a couple of months ago. Apart from that... some snorkelling (including floating in a swarm of millions of tiny fish), some EXCELLENT massages from the Sensi inhouse masseuse and several books each!
As we have said before and will doubtless say again, we love it here and would recommend Sensi to anyone for a fabulous, relaxing break. We'll be back!
We arrived with some worries- in the three year interim, would Ko Tao have become over-developed and would Sensi Paradise have become similarly spoiled? The short answer to both is 'no'. Sensi has undergone some work, building a few new bungalows, upgrading some
existing ones to aircon, moving the reception desk to a really daft location up a hill and building a swimming pool. None of these is a terrible thing. The pool's very nice, though we'd rather lie on the private beach with glorious sea in front of us (at least other people use the pool, though, so the beach is quieter). Bizarrely, we're paying less now than three years ago for the same room (well, the room next door but it's identical and has a better view) and we got upgraded to an aircon room for free (honeymoon!) for half the stay as the one we wanted wasn't available. That said, we actually prefer the cheaper room (35) to the aircon one (13) - aircon is nothing compared to a jungle/cliff-side location with bed indoors and a daybed outdoors. The perfect sundowner location.
The rooms are certainly in the thick of nature - and that's a key part of their charm. Not only are we surrounded by the sounds of the jungle (the chorus of cicadas at sundown is near-deafening!) we also had a night-time visitor to our bathroom who had a penchant for soap. Halfway through the night, Suzie got up and found the bar with teeth marks... and by morning, the whole thing had vanished!
From what we've seen, the island hasn't changed all that much. Maybe there just isn't space in the port town for much development, or maybe there are strict rules. Whatever, it's good. The only change we rue is the closure of Villa Magenta, our favourite restaurant, right on the front, to be turned into yet another massge shop. Idiots. Still, we've worked tirelessly to find a replacement, and we really like the Royal Resort (right next to Sensi but with food half the price) and Paprika (almost in town, on the front, nice curry- and we didn't mind getting the starters half an hour after the mains).
And what have we done? Well, apart from an excellent amount of sitting, we've been diving twice. We did a day trip of two dives at Chumphorn Pinnacle with Golden Divers and spent a morning at Twin Peaks and White Rock with Blue Diamond. Between them, we've seen huge triggerfish, loads of angel fish, eels, almost unbelievably large groupers and more. Neither of us had any problems with our ears and generally we're so much more confident (and competent) than we were a couple of months ago. Apart from that... some snorkelling (including floating in a swarm of millions of tiny fish), some EXCELLENT massages from the Sensi inhouse masseuse and several books each!
As we have said before and will doubtless say again, we love it here and would recommend Sensi to anyone for a fabulous, relaxing break. We'll be back!
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