Day 1:
I arrived at the Phuket Airport around noon and after looking at the various published fares for different taxi companies negotiated one down to 500 THB. I am not sure if I overpaid by a little or by a lot but I wasn’t going to let that ruin my vacation. 🙂 The cab ride is a short 15 minutes and after passing the other two Marriott properties (JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa and Marriott’s Phuket Beach Club) I arrived at the Renaissance property.
Hotel Review: Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa
After getting to my room, I took a shower and then since it was already around 2 PM, I was starving. I just decided to order something off the room-service menu.
The Thai fried rice with chicken was soo delicious, I ended up having the same for lunch during the other days.
After lunch, I decided to head out for the beach. The sky was a bit overcast during the evening and I ended up just relaxing at the lounge chairs on the beach instead of getting in the water.
Day 2:
Next day woke up a little late and after breakfast I head out straight for the beach. It was bright and sunny and the water was clear and very warm, even warmer than what we experienced in the trip to Maldives during the same time the year before.
After taking a shower, I ordered the same menu that I had the day before – and you know what, it was just as delicious as the day before.
Renaissance Phuket resort is a bit far away from the main touristy part of Phuket mainly Patong Beach. The resort does provide a shuttle at set times to and from Patong as long as there are at least 2 passengers. The shuttle costs 700 THB for the round trip which seems reasonable for a drive that takes about an hour each way (45 Km distance).
As it turns out, the shuttle leaving at 3 PM did not get the required number of passengers and was cancelled and when I signed up again for the 5 PM shuttle found out that another russian couple had already signed up for the same one. We ended up picking another guest (another Indian but from Canada) from the JW Marriott resort and made our way to Patong.
By the time we reached Patong it was already dusk. Still the beach looked more crowded than what I was used to at the resort. I along with the Canadian guy ended up walking on the beach for an hour.
Next we ended up at a restaurant near Soi Bangla and had dinner and walked around the streets people watching. Pretty soon our shuttle was back at the designated spot and we got back to Mai Khao Beach in an hour.
Day 3:
This was my last day in Phuket so wanted to make the most of it. After breakfast, I headed straight to the beach and spent about an hour and a half in the water.
Pretty soon it was 2 PM and it was time to head back to the airport. I had a wonderful time in Phuket. Loved the clean, warm water in the beaches here and will definitely be back (hopefully next year in 2015).