My villa at Soneva Kiri was nothing short of amazing and I could have happily lazed away days (or months) without ever leaving the confines of my gorgeous digs. However, Soneva Kiri is a truly massive resort with a tonne of places to explore and lots of little features amazing enough to tempt me to occasionally get out of my glorious private pool.

When I say the resort is massive – this is not an exaggeration. The resort provides all guests with a personal buggy to use during their stay, because getting from place to place would take ages without one!

I am quite possibly the worst driver in the world (seriously, any and all of my friends will confirm this) so I was a initially rather nervous that I would crash this little vehicle! I had to put in about thirty minutes of ‘practice’ before I felt okay to take it out on the resort, but I got the hang of it surprisingly quickly. I definitely maintained the motto ‘slow and steady wins the race’ the entire time. I am pretty sure my travel insurance would not have covered injury by golf buggy!

There are a stack of different places to dine at the resort, and all of them are good. Plus – they are gorgeous! I will be going into more detail about a number of these dining experiences in the upcoming edition of Ellen Eats. Stay tuned.

This is just a tiny fraction of the desserts on offer at one of the restaurants – that chocolate ball thing at the top of picture – yep, I ate about five of them. Whoops!

Soneva Kiri claims to be putting a big effort into become increasingly sustainable and more environmentally friendly – so when the opportunity came up to check out these efforts first hand – I jumped at the chance.

Welcome to ‘Eco-Centro’.

I was given an hour long tour of the resorts incredible variety of efforts to become more and more sustainable.

The first stop was the little house where they grow a variety of mushrooms. These mushrooms are grown over time in recycled bottles and are then served in the many on-site restaurants! I tried them in several meals and can attest to just how tasty they were.

This next picture is of where they re-use any and all oil that they can, although apparently not for cooking.

The Thai man who guided me around the eco-centro area was incredibly knowledgeable and it was obvious that he cared about this project a great deal. I later found out that it was he who started this project and cares for it and protects it like it is his own child. Such care really does shine through – look at this beautiful nursery!

This is a type of passionfruit I had not seen before. A pale white colour on the outside, they looked nothing like the dark brown passionfruit I have grown up with. The flesh of the fruit was absolutely delicious, a bit more strong than I was used to, but in a good way. I love fruit with a bit of bite!

Look at this ingenious way of reusing plastic bottles!

The water was a really interesting part of eco-centro. There are several different lakes here with special filtration systems in each one. Water is recycled and treated here until it is safe to use on the trees and non-edible plants. Each of the small lakes holds water that has undergone different levels of treatment – some are now relatively clean and safe, and others are still on the way!

The variety of plants and herbs was pretty impressive! I loved the bananas, chillies and the incredible smelling herbs.

They even make their own honey! Apparently these ‘beehives’ are a relatively new edition to eco-centro, but had already begun producing top quality honey. Pretty amazing!

Possibly my favourite feature of eco-centro was this floor – I never would have thought to use old glass bottles in such a way.

After eating more incredible fresh fruit, leaving eco-centro, getting pampered with an incredible massage at the on-site Six Senses Spa and gorging myself on an amazing dinner (stay tuned to the Thailand edition of Ellen Eats) it was time to check out the Cinema Paradiso.

Cinema Paradiso is pretty fricking wonderful. My pictures here do not do it justice, but is an outdoor cinema, set over a gorgeous lake. The picture from the screen is reflected onto the water and is truly a sight to behold.

I settled in to watch the incredibly long film Everest and enjoyed spending hours underneath the stars.

T H E L O W D O W N
Getting to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi: The busiest airport in Bangkok, you can fly to Bangkok from any major airport hub
Getting to Soneva Kiri: Click here to learn more about Soneva Kiri’s Slow Life Flights
Soneva Kiri: One of Thailand’s best resorts, click here for more info
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1 with M.Zuiko 12-40mm f2.8 lens
Blue Maxi Dress: Tigerlily ‘Kira’ maxi dress – available here in rose
Remember: Bring sunscreen, even in monsoonal months the sun can be harsh

Don’t forget to add me on Snapchat and Instagram – @wwellend – for more foolishness and travel adventures!

Disclosure: My stay at Soneva Kiri was provided FOC by the Soneva Resorts group, however, all thoughts and opinions expressed on this blog are unbiased and in no way influenced by the Soneva Group.