First trip to Thailand, Phuket day 2

Alrighty, so day two in Phuket. You may have noticed we didn’t go for a swim yesterday. Today we plan to change that.

We have breakfast in the restaurant and not the club lounge. A benefit of being a Gloablist, as TW now is, is Club access. Club’s have their own breakfasts and some are amazing, others are continental with an egg option or just pure continental. It really depends on the hotel. A benefit of a Privé booking is that we paid no extra and we are able to have a full breakfast in the restaurant. There is no real question in our mind, all options are better than some so we head down to try the full buffet.

Globalists that book into a Hyatt hotel without a club lounge are given a full breakfast for free as they won’t receive the evening canapes. And no doubt the hotels don’t want to put a continental selection together for a few guests. It would be cheaper just to offer them the buffet.

Breakfast is pretty nice. A big selection, wide open spaces. It is a lot like the Andaz in Singapore in that it has a large variety of different cuisines available. TW thinks it is not as good, I don’t know. It might be at the same level just different. I had a killer Penang pork curry for breakfast so I am pretty happy.

We were going to go check out the little beach here but as we stand up to leave breakfast we see it is super low tide. The receding water has unveiled the rocky shore. Too many rocks for any kind of swimming. That is ok though, we have two pools. Our exclusive club pool and the main pool. We head up to our room to get changed and cool off in the water.

Phuket isn’t as hot or humid as Singapore. Not at the moment anyway, there may be days when that is different but the nights are much cooler here than nights in Singapore and the days are a fairly pleasant temperature. We start to get changed when I realise, although I clearly remember doing it, I haven’t packed my swimmers. TW goes through my case and I go through his. Definitely not here. My memory of packing them was the 17 times we had to repack our bags leaving the Andaz to get everything to fit.

OMG I am in Phuket and I have no swimmers! Emergency alert. Sigh. What. Nooo. Sigh. Now I have to go buy some, gah, today was meant to be about just relaxing. We head to the boutique to see what they have, stopping in at the club lounge on the way for a cool drink. They still have breakfast out – it looks decent but I am happy for the full breakfast.

The lobby boutique has a reasonably priced pair of swimmers and a few in the discount bin. Neither of us can remember why or how it came to pass but we decided to go into town instead of just buying a set here. The grab taxi cost is the same as the swimmers and we will need to pay that twice. There and back. Why would we do that? No one knows but we did.

Rather than just go down the street to the closest town, we went into Patong. I guess so we could see it and say we had been to one of the more known areas of Phuket Island. Almost instantly on exiting the cab I feel like I am getting sunburnt.

We shop, everything is more expensive and not as nice as the hotel boutique. Now I am sure I am burning. We head to the beach for a look, I still don’t have swimmers. From the beach, we get a taxi back to the Hyatt. Things here aren’t cheap and the start of every street smells like someone just took a dump which TW can’t smell because his smell is gone again.

I guess we should have asked for a pool room, I could have just jumped in, in clothes if we had our own pool. Back to the hotel and straight to the lobby boutique. I buy a pair of swimmers. Nice. Done. Now they just cost three times as much because we went into town but whatever, I have swimmers for the rest of the trip now.

Up to our room, via buggy, we aren’t making up that hill without help. We both get changed and head down to the club pool. We swim there a bit and then head down to the main pool. The club pool didn’t have any shade and we were hoping to find some at the main pool.

Getting to the main pool is again via buggy, the walk is quite steep. We did do it once but I almost tripped and rolled down so buggy is really best. I want to head straight over to one of the available floating (style) cabanas but TW doesn’t think we can get food so he finds a shadeless set of seats and suggests we sit there instead. Nope. I am sure I got burned in Phuket, I am not sitting in the sun.

Our compromise is to eat at the pool house bar area. Under the cover of a solid roof, by the pool and outside. We do this while I watch the Cabana’s I wanted to sit in fill up. It is ok, TW is hungry, it is his birthday holiday. Whatever he wants, goes.

Lunch was pretty nice. We sit a while after and then go and try and find a non-floating cabana. They offer more shade than the sun loungers. Some sets have an umbrella and others don’t but all of the cabanas have curtains and roof shade. We did find one and put our stuff there before heading in to the pool.

Sadly, there isn’t a whole lot of shade in the main pool either. We spent far too long out in the sun and both got sunburnt. TW started to think maybe there was too much sun and it looked like one of the floating cabanas had freed up. It was casing a shadow over the water so I swam over to it and hid from the sun like a vampire while he got our stuff and moved it over.

TW wanted to do another hour in the water. I think we stayed another half hour. I could see his face turning red. It felt like mine was also but TW insisted he couldn’t see any burn anywhere. An hour would be too long. We didn’t use sunscreen we need to get out of the sun. Even though technically we are in the shade now, we aren’t doing ourselves any favours.

Well, I have heat stroke now, so that’s me going to be sunburnt and moody for the rest of the trip. I try to rehydrate and sleep it off. Our doorbell rings. TW is in the lounge room, the hotel has brought him up a birthday cake. How sweet. I get out of bed to see it. They brought him fruit as well. Nice. Very thoughtful.

TW wakes me to go for evening canapés. I don’t want to go. We have dinner booked. I get dragged down. I’m not hungry. I don’t want to stay long. TW wants to eat and drink and wants me to stay with him while he does it.

I promised I would try and take better photos of the desserts, they were different today. Great for me, not great for a photo explanation. The pink one is similar in style to the green one from last night. Very different tasting but complex in the making so I did take an explanitory photo of it.

The yellow things might be corn, the pink things were actually a clear gel with pink stuff inside. These make the glass look pink, the liquid in the glass is both clear and white. I did like yesterdays better but we have already established I am not in the mood for anything now.

Dinner is almost directly after, I do want a nap so I ask TW if he can finish his beer so I can get a nap in. I get about 20 minutes to nap. We have dinner booked in at the sunset grill which is next to our lower deck. TW calls to see if we can enter through the adjoining door. He isn’t understood so we walk around.

Dinner, I am not hungry. I probably should have just ordered a side but I hadn’t realised how not hungry I was. We get a free glass of bubbles each – I think because it is TW’s birthday, maybe because he is globalist. I am not sure. TW drinks both mine and his and orders a margarita. He is going to be drunk tonight and moody tomorrow.

We have breads placed on the table and then an amuse bouche arrived. The same prawns we had in the lounge last night. It was pretty nice. Very hot, just made. They were a little cooler in the lounge. FWe ordered only a main each so we weren’t expecting any kind of starter. TW ordered a side of mash potato with his, but nothing to start. It was a nice surprise and I would have appreciated it much more any day other than right now.

I ordered the monk fish green curry and TW the grilled tuna. His came with potato wedges. I wish I got that. I was going to get the tuna but we usually order something different to try more than one dish each. Tonight, I think I probably should have ordered what TW wanted and we just had the same.

When dinner is over, everything is over for me. I just want to sleep. I am burning. My skin is on fire. The meal ends with cold towels and petit fours. I feel like we had a four-course degustation but all we did was order a main.

Bed at last. But the night isn’t over yet. TW brings the gift that the restaurant gave us just as we were leaving. Aw, how cute. Some macarons. These will need to wait for another day. Well, TW could eat them but he ate all his meal and some of mine so I don’t think he has room for them either.

Now lets see if I can sleep through the pain.