Fergie’s retreat to Thailand spent at luxury spa

BANGKOK (AP) - Sarah Ferguson wasn’t invited to last month’s royal wedding so she made do with a retreat to a luxury beachfront resort in Thailand where villas go for $1,000 a night.

The Duchess of York told “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in an interview that aired Wednesday that she sought refuge in Thailand to ease the blow of missing Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge. She told Winfrey, “The jungle embraced me.”

“It was so difficult,” Ferguson said in quotes provided by Harpo Productions. “Because I wanted to be there with my girls and to _ and to be getting them dressed and to go as a family.”

Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, attended the April 29 wedding with their father and Ferguson’s former husband, Prince Andrew.

The sales director at the Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary on Samui island, Sally Martin, confirmed that Ferguson had been a guest. She rejected tabloid accounts that Ferguson spent her holiday sulking, saying “Absolutely not.”

She declined to share any other details of Ferguson’s stay.

“As she said, she came to Thailand to be in the jungle. She wasn’t invited to the wedding, so she came here,” Martin said.

After Ferguson’s appearance on Winfrey’s show, the hotel took its phone number off its website to avoid anticipated media calls, Martin said, but will restore it “in due course.”

Ferguson’s new series “Finding Sarah” is to premiere in June on Winfrey’s new cable station, OWN.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.