One of the best places to honeymoon? Kuoni says Thailand.

Banyan Tree Koh Samui - a perfect honeymoon hideaway

 The word honeymoon itself is enough to bring sighs and gushes to the lips of young maidens, and fleeting clouds of twinkling stars to their eyes. The stuff of fairy tales since they were little princesses ...

So no pressure then when it comes to choosing the best honeymoon destination.

Especially if it's only a once-in-a-lifetime experience (which we all sincerely hope it is when going into it.)

Let's narrow it down for you. The good folks at Kuoni have just released their 2013 Travel Trends report and Amazing Thailand ranks number 3 in terms of the most desirable and best places to go for a honeymoon this year.

A couple I know were both working in a resort in the Maldives when they got married. So, if you already live and work in the Maldives -- another shitty day in Paradise! -- where do you go for your honeymoon?

In their case, Bangkok. Jing Jing!

Andrew wanted to play golf with his mates, and Liz was happy to trawl the shopping emporiums of the City of Angels.

Personally I might look further afield to some of the smaller islands. Ko Samui comes immediately to mind. (For your info, the word koh in Thai means island, so need need to repeat Koh Samui island.) I have blogged about Samui a fair bit, so have a little search around my blog archive.

Beautiful sunsets and romantic beach walks

Then there's Yao Noi, a really unspoilt little island in the Krabi area (so you could combine a few spots, some lively, some quieter and more secluded in your trip). If you really want to indulge in the most wonderful spot, choose the Six Senses Yao Noi. 

Ko Lanta is another that comes to mind in the Krabi area, in the Andaman Sea, with endless stretches of white sandy beaches. As does Khao Lak, just north of Phuket.

All those places will give you idyllic beaches, sunshine, diving and snorkelling. 

Do I actually recommend Phuket? Frankly I am over it as I've been travelling there since 1988 (!) and I can see how it's really popular with the beach and beer crowd -- not really how you want to spend your honeymoon is it? (Or if so, good thing you are not married to me!) Although there is the Millionaire's Mile of Anantara, Indigo Pearl, JW Marriot, etc up the very top north west of the island.

But if you prefer mountains and quieter bucolic times, choose Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai which also have a lifetime's worth of cozy and secluded resorts, with languid vistas of rice fields and beautiful valleys.

Gardens at Doi Tung, Chiang Rai province.

So that's almost a top 10 destinations for honeymoon in Thailand. Hope it's been a useful starting point for you? Let me know.

Of course, if you'd like to go to the Maldives for honeymoon anyway, it's easy to access from Bangkok too. So you can have the best of both worlds, and, like Liz and Andrew, claim you spent your honeymoon in Bangkok.

Khao Lak -- Le Meridien, Le Activities, and Le Yaa Dong

Khao Lak (pronounced 'Cow Luck') sounds like some kind of dairy milk supplement or something, but in fact it is one of the better-kept secrets of Thailand. The sneaky Scandinavians of course have known about it for years, not bothering to tell the rest of the world that there were more glorious stretches of white, white beaches and crystal blue waters just minutes to the north of Phuket.

But that's just the kind of behaviour you might find from the countries that gave us the Volvo, crispbread, ABBA, and pickled herring.

It's far more international now, witnessed by the fact the La Meridien here has a German general manager (Torsten Richter) and an Indonesian marketing manager (Linawaty Ko), working with an utterly delightful local crew to make this something out of the ordinary: the wall-to-wall activities program for instance features a run with the GM, some days tens of kilometres long. More Club Mad than Club Med. Jing jing!

The resort is neatly divided in two, with rooms for couples centred around the Spa complex (rated by some publication somewhere to be 'Top 20 in Asia'), and the Family complex on the opposite side comprises rooms for families, with their own pool and Penguin Kids club. Oh, and then there's the pool villa section, where for a cheeky 90,000 baht (plus plus) you can lounge around in their oh-so-impressive Ocean Front Residential Pool Villa. (There was an Australian family checking in for three weeks the day I was there, otherwise, mais oui, I would've naturally been assigned to that room.)

I was happy enough to swim at the beach, with its glorious warm waters and swimming platforms about 100m out to sea. And then walking back to the room I almost tripped over a baby elephant going for his morning constitutional. The Eagles song 'Peaceful Easy Feeling' is for some reason running through my head.

Oh, and the other thing running through my head was Yaa Dong. Haven't heard of it? Yaa Dong is a Thai herbal whiskey made from bark, roots, and herbal extracts, infused in whiskey. Despite its reputed medicinal and therapeutic values, mostly this is an under-the-counter sort of concoction in Thailand, but at Le Meridien Khao Lak, it's loud an proud on the counter of the lobby bar. Tasting like cough medicine when you were a kid. And BRIGHT red.

After a few Yaa Dongs and a sumptuous seafood meal, we went down to the beach to release khoom loy paper lanterns. With the accompanying soundtrack of ukelele wizard Israel Khamaca Kharmakameleon  Kamakawiwo'ole's What a Wonderful World as the flickering lanterns rose on the soft evening breeze and drifted over the ocean, you could not but think ...

That's right -- you couldn't help but think the Scandinavians have probably been drinking Yaa Dong for years without telling us about it. It would certainly explain a lot.