Praew and I took a brief trip to Ratchaburi for her work over the past few days. While we were there, she found us a rather nice resort called “La Toscana”. It was Italian villa themed, and while we were a bit worried about it being quite tacky, it was very tastefully done.

All-in-all, Praew made the astute observation that Ratchaburi is like Khao Yai 10+ years ago. A number of small independent resorts (some tasteful and some tacky), but none of the megaprojects that have sprung up in the past 5-10 years.

Here are a few pictures around our room:

Most of the villas have an outdoor patio on the roof where you can hang out:

And the gardens and landscaping were quite impressive too

I’m not sure you can get a sense of it from these pictures, but walking around at night was quite romantic too

The villa we stayed in was about 3000 THB per night, which was quite inexpensive for what it was, in my opinion. The bathroom alone was enormous, being bigger than a normal hotel room. The bathroom had a full “classic style” freestanding bathtub, “keyhole design” shower (think of a freestanding shower in the middle of the room that looks like a cement “C” when viewed from the top), dual sinks, and toilet. And with a separate area for bathtub, shower and sinks, and toilet where each area was probably larger than most resort bathrooms we’ve seen.

While almost everything I was worried would be subpar was actually exceptional, there were a few things I wouldn’t have expected to be problems that were subpar. First, the resort has exactly the kind of ambiance that young Thai engaged couples would be attracted to for their pre-wedding pictures. And the resort clearly markets to this demographic. Pretty much all day every day, you can look around and see 3 or 4 groups of bride and groom (fully dressed in wedding gown and suit) and their entourage of photographers and make-up people and lighting people. They aren’t exactly loud and annoying or anything, but it is a bit strange to see everywhere. And you’ll find them taking pictures right outside your room on occasion. (But fortunately for Praew’s sake, never quite close enough for me to want to tell them off.)

The other oddness was the music playing from the pool area and lobby/restaurant area. The same CD, looped all day, everyday. Playing your favorite all saxophone renditions of Put the Records On (Corinne Bailey Rae), Take My Breath Away, (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay, and many others. As with most albums resorts choose to loop endlessly, it wasn’t so bad the first four or five times I heard it. After that…

And while it wasn’t blaringly loud, it was loud enough to hear (faintly) from anywhere in the resort. But thank goodness they turned it off at a reasonable hour of the night. (Unlike one other resort I can remember.)

And my final gripe was the beautiful classic phone design in the room had the most horrible ring sound of any telephone I’ve ever heard. For some reason I will never understand, they called multiple times the first morning starting at around 8AM to ask things like “will you be going to breakfast” and “what time do you want them to come and make-up the room”. Fortunately they didn’t call on the second day after we told them not to. But waking up due to the phone ringer at 8AM,, I swore it was a smoke detector going off. Why the hell would a resort room’s telephone ringer be designed to sound like a smoke detector?

While I enjoy complaining about the above, it was really an enjoyable stay. And the restaurant food was good, although it wasn’t anything I would call out. But at least the service there was excellent due to an attentive and friendly restaurant manager, which in my mind can add a star or two to any restaurant.

If you are interested in directions:

And feel free to go to their website for more info including more pictures:
http://www.latoscana-resort.com/