Just Phuket

Although it'd always amused my naughty-schoolboy self to make "f***-it" puns about this place, someone burst my bubble before we came by explaining it was pronounced "pooket". Never mind.

Previously, I'd expected Phuket to have a negative "youngsters' party island" vibe. Hence it only got on our itinerary because Aussie friend and colleague Pat told me there were really nice parts too - like Karon Beach.

By contrast, Clare expected an exclusive, quite high-end destination - which is far closer to what we found.

After our usual fairly thorough, though last-but-one-minute research, we'd booked at the Mövenpick Resort & Spa Karon Beach.

I knew the Swiss-run Mövenpick hotel chain from two periods of over a year when I was working in The Hague and staying there. Good quality without being pretentious.

Nevertheless, their Phuket hotel was quite large and I didn't expect an outstanding experience outside a small/boutique hotel. I was wrong.

Although we've thought quite hard, we can't fault it.

We arrived to a choice of rooms, and picked the one that was lighter and with a (far) better view, even at the cost of having separate beds.

There are three pools, one with a swim-up bar, one with almost no children and one too small and square (c/f 3 bears). Then there's the beach - long, white and quiet, with beautiful crashing rows of surf and hawkers easily urged on their way. The ice-cream guy was, however, eagerly welcomed. We couldn't work out how he kept our two Magnums nearly solid in his shoulder-carried cool bag, but we were grateful.

We've spent two days at the beach, one at the big pool and three at the middle pool, with beer arriving for me at a moderate rate, once I'd trained the pool staff ;-)

The hotel has the best buffet breakfast I've ever seen (and I've seen quite a few), with a very wide choice. There are three different dinner restaurants - all at reasonable restaurant prices. We did have room service twice, and it arrived bang on the 30 minutes they said each time. I guess that's the Swiss influence.

We've been very happy here. Only fear is that this'll be hard to beat, and it'd be a shame to have the best first, and downhill from there.

It has occurred to me that the blog posts from this leg might be less interesting than the preceding ones. They were real voyages of discovery, in various ways. This leg is a lot more like five pretty nobby beach holidays in a row. If we'd been taking them separately, then they wouldn't count as "adventure travel" and so wouldn't normally appear here. We will keep writing, but trying to concentrate on our experience rather than hotel reviews.

Sydney next :-)