Phuket

While on assignment in Singapore - we made a long weekend getaway to Phuket staying at the J.W. Marriott. Unfortunately the weather was petty rainy.  While there we bought a “vacation week” at the Marriott Vacation Club, Phuket - for $US 15,000.

All in all Thailand was inexpensive.  Our room at the Marriott was a special deal of $US 299 for 3 nights + 20,000 United frequent flier points.

Travel

We flew from SIN to Phuket in BC via Silk Air a SIA subsidiary - fare was a no cost add-on to our SYD-SIN fare. We got up on Friday morning at 6AM ready for our 4 day getaway to Phuket.  We caught the 8:50AM flight on Silk Air to Phuket – a short 1 hour 20 minute flight.  Silk Air service was excellent – a very good breakfast – Singapore Airlines (Silk Air’s parent company) could learn a few tricks in the galley. Arrival at Phuket International Airport was uneventful – except for the queuing at the immigration checkpoint. All-in-all – not too bad – 20 minutes and the luggage was waiting for us.

The Weather

Generally it was pretty rainy but still warm and humid - not surprising given that it was the low season.

Highlights

• J. W. Marriott - the hotel was excellent - almost brand new - great pools and service.

• Phi Phi Island tour - a full day speed boat tour to Phi Phi and other islands - very touristico but fun anyway - rain held out for most of the day. Up and at em 7:00am – a quick brekkie and off by mini-bus for our Phi Phi Island day trip.  At 2900 B (note 27 Bhat to the A$) per person it seemed like a good deal.  What they don’t tell us or what we did not check carefully enough in the fine print is that they pack 20-30 people on their speedboats.  Anyway even though the weather did not look fantastic – lots of cloud and intermittent rain – off we went (note it was the rainy season so this was very typical).  First stop about 1 hour away was Maya Bay Lagoon (site of the movie “The Beach”) – it was a very beautiful lagoon and beach however much to our surprise it was very congested with numerous tourist boats and 100’s of people on the beach – and this was low season.  After a 30 minute stop (enough time for a quick dip and a few photos) off we went. Next stop was Monkey Beach – again a very scenic beach where many monkeys roam the beach and sit in overhanging trees waiting for tourist boats to stop and feed them peanuts and bananas – they clearly don’t go hungry – there were at least a dozen boats – some monkeys were even bold enough to jump on the boats to grab food.  All very cute but quite ‘touristico’. Off again – next step Loh Sa Mah bay for some great snorkelling – lots of small fish.  We stopped for an hour and a half on one of the Phi Phi Islands for lunch – a ‘scrumptious’ buffet at a run down restaurant which was part of a (budget I presume) resort.  It was certainly a high point of low points as far as cuisine goes – for anywhere in the world. So much so we awarded the restaurant one of the famous (or shall we say infamous) Schafer plaques  - “Worst restaurant in the world”. Afterwards while walking along the beach we spotted a small beach front bar / restaurant which was a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World !!.  From here we traveling one hour in very rough seas to Khai Nai beach – a very nice beach – it would have been totally deserted except for the 100’s of beach chairs and umbrellas and concession stands.  The charge for the use of 2 chairs & umbrella was 150 B – a tourist rip off (and an undocumented feature of the day trip).  It was all a bit sad looking – tattered and mouldy.  The snorkelling should have been very good but rough seas and a strong current made it very difficult to access – even for very experienced snorkelers like us. Anyway – finally back to the marina at 5:30pm – in spite of changeable weather and some touristico aspects of the tour and the venues, lots of fun.  The surrounding islands are very beautiful and the beaches lovely – with beautiful soft sand.

• Vacation Club - after promising ourselves we’d never do it - we bought a one-week vacation timeshare at Marriott’s Phuket Club (which is part of the hotel). Our main objective is to use this week to exchange for other places around the world. (Note - we finally sold this at a loss a few years later - thanks goodness).

• Self guided tour - on Monday we woke to monsoonal rains so we cancelled the hire car we had booked for 8:30 am and went for breakfast.  At 9:00 am we met with our sales rep again and gave him the green light on the Vacation Club – a one-week low season deal for $US15,600 – in 6 easy payments to our AmEx card.  Who knows – it’s not our life savings.  Following this – it seemed to stop raining (or at least let up) so we re-booked our hire-car.  We set off at about 10:30AM in our Honda Jazz compact (automatic with air-conditioning – not bad for about $A60 per day).  Our only map was the tourist map you pickup at the airport – which showed only the main roads. Anyway – we set off to drive around the island – we did OK – only got lost a couple of times. We had lunch at a nice hotel restaurant at Pudong Beach which seems to have pretty much recovered from the tsunami – it is pretty much your typical Asian tourist strip beach with lots of beach attractions and backpacker grade restaurants, clubs, shops and so on. We got back to the resort safe and sound had another great meal at the Grill and went to bed.