Phuket travel review
by Sylvia on 17/04/09 at 6:56 am
As you already know from my article “why you should pack your bags and go travelling” l feel that if you have the time and money, you should try to go away on a frequent basis. My recent trip was to Phuket, Thailand in South East Asia. Now this island was never on the top of my list, but as it is close to Singapore and therefore an easy and affordable trip for me, I thought I should give it a try.
Phuket was of course one of the many disaster zones of the tsunami in 2004, but it is great to see that the island has bounced back and is thriving again. I actually visited one of the worst hit areas which was Nai Yang Beach. The resort that I went to, the Indigo Pearl Hotel Phuket, was brand new and to be honest it was one of the nicest hotels I have ever been to. As we only went for a few days we thought we would spoil ourselves and go to a nice hotel with a kids club, nice pools, next to a beach and beautiful grounds.
Selecting hotels by the way is not one of my favorite activities. It always seems to take too much time and even after all that work you are never quite sure if you made the right decision. I now often use tripadvisor.com for travel reviews and advice and then either book my hotel through hotelclub.com or go to ratestogo.com or wotif.com for last minute bookings.
As mentioned this time I was very pleased with my choice. I have never been in a hotel room that I just wanted to wrap up and take with me. But here the interior architecture was just superb and a lot of attention had been paid to detail. The whole design was inspired by a tin mine and all the products in the room, the textured walls, colours, the decor and details reflected that. I booked the Pearl Bed room and we had a huge balcony with an outside batch and a large daybed with a view over the gardens and the infinity pool. This was perfect for lazying around in the evenings and reading books.
The beach was perhaps not the greatest but for us it was perfect. A cosy little bay with quiet water, nice deck chairs with parasols and residing water in the afternoon so that my son could play soccer on the beach. The water was so warm you could swim there all day and in the evening we enjoying watching the beautiful sunset.
On our second day we decided to discover the island and hired a taxi with driver (about US70 for a day). We had a look at busy Patong Beach which is the place to go if you want to party a lot. This town is full of tourists, restaurants and pubs. I wasn’t too keen on the atmosphere or the beach there so wouldn’t stay there myself. A few minutes drive away from Patong, we found a lovely minigolf (my son just LOVES minigolf) which was beautifully made and had a dinossaur theme. They also had a lovely cafe where we had lunch.
Our next stop was Kata Beach. This was actually a lovely town with a wonderful beach. Beautiful sand and blue water and lots of waves which are great for boogie surfing. This may be a better place to go if you have older children that want a bit more wave action.
We then proceeded to follow to the south and had a quick visit to Phuket Town.
The next day we went out by bus and boat to see some of the nearby islands like Ko Phi Phi Le island (Ao Maya beach which is where the movie “The Beach” was filmed) and Khai Island. Here you will see some of the most amazing scenery and beautiful fish. We snorkelled and could spend a few hours on a lovely spot where we could do some more snorkeling and sun bathing.
We spent our last day relaxing on our “own” Nai Yang Beach and enjoyed the wonderful scenery of beuatiful Phuket and our lovely hotel. All in all I can say that Phuket is definitly worth a visit. The nature is astonishing, the climate fantastic, the people very friendly and if you enjoy an architecturally designed hotel inspired by a tin mine then definitely try out the Indigo Pearl in Phuket.
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