Sheraton Grande Laguna, Phuket, Thailand

We love Thailand but had never been to Phuket. We chose the Sheraton on Trailfinder's advice and we weren't disappointed. It was a massive hotel with a wide mix of people and at Easter lots of English children. The pool is massive - one of the biggest in Asia or something - and had a little beach area and lots of shallow places for little ones to enjoy.

The food in the hotel was good but pricey, there were different restaurants for breakfast depending on whether you were staying in the hotel rooms or the hotel villas. If you didn't want to eat in the hotel there were lots of Thai beach cafes to eat in which looked a bit basic but were actually lovely and very cheap.

The beach was long and wide, with quite a few hotels spread along it, but it never felt crowded. The sea was hot which was lovely, but there were sea lice on some days which made swimming very painful so that was disappointing. I love to snorkel and there was no coral near the shore but you could arrange trips for a day or half a day to other parts of the island or take a long boat from the beach to a small coral patch which we did twice and which kept us all happy. There was a beach massage hut with about 12 beds and you could have an hour's massage for £8.50 - great for the rainy afternoons - of which there were a few.

There was a kids' club from age 4 in the hotel and although we didn't use it that much it was, again, useful for the afternoons when the rains came (they showed a movie at 4.30 every day) and a couple of times when it was just too hot to be out. The hotel had two baby elephants who came onto the beach every day and played with the children. We couldn't decide if this was cruel or not but it was certainly an amazing experience for the children.

The sun was the fiercest I have known (April) and everyone was burning. The children had UV suits already but we ended up buying them for me and the dh as well. The accommodation was varied from regular hotel rooms to three storey family suites to private pool villas a short bus ride from the complex. We were upgraded to a private pool villa and it was amazing - really lovely but I think we were lucky, all the villas were a bit different. Some folks in the villas didn't like having to get the shuttle bus (every 20 mins) back to the hotel, but we didn't mind and towards the end of the holiday got organised with bikes and cycled to breakfast which was an adventure.

We flew via Singapore rather than Bangkok and given that there were riots in Bangkok when we went home we were quite glad. Would also really recommend Singapore airport for its family friendliness - it's just so well thought out my kids would have happily spent a week there.

Overall a great holiday and we'll definitely be going back.