Kata Beach - Phuket, Thailand.

After our house sit in New Zealand had finished we could not find another house to fill a 12 day gap, so we looked into Hong Kong and Japan. As we have grown accustom to house sitting, it wasn't that easy parting with the cash on a hotel. We searched for nearly 2 weeks straight looking for hotels in both area's but non of them seemed value for money. The best prices we could find (for what we wanted) was £500 and this was only for one week. This I guess is what you pay for a city, but the size of a room was tiny compared to what we have paid else where in the world. So after a long thought we decided neither place is where we wanted to go so we settled on going back to Thailand where we knew we can get value for money and food is cheap.

Now we have been to Phuket twice already on this trip and both times we have stayed in Patong, but this time we wanted somewhere a little quieter to enjoy more of a holiday experience, because any traveler will know its hard work!!! lol. My sister and her husband had just been to Karon beach and loved it (please read her blog if you haven't already www.stylespeakslouder.com) so we looked into this area and also Kata Beach, which are in walking distance from each other.

We finally settled on Kata beach and we were not disappointed. We didn't want the busy streets that are in Patong and we are not clubbers so that scene did not matter we just wanted a quiet relaxing hotel. I don't know about you but when I read reviews on TripAdvisor I am always left more confused then when i started because everyone is different and some people just nit pick. (I too am one of those people at times). We found a hotel called Chanalia Flora Resort and on reading reviews I learn that there are too many stairs to climb, there isn't enough choice at breakfast and the pools were small. So I was a little dubious of what to expect when we got there, but from the moment we stepped out of the car the staff were fantastic. They could not do enough for us, and with it being low season there was maintenance going on around the hotel, the first room they put us in had no view and they were chopping trees down outside our window so we asked to move rooms and the did this immediately. We were given a top floor room with a sea view and it was perfect. (We did ask ourselves why they gave us the first room when the hotel was quiet??) There were stairs to climb to reach the lifts to the rooms but there was about 15 steps at the most so who ever complained about the stairs is just lazy. The breakfast had loads to offer from toast, noodles, pancakes, eggs, rice, cereal and fruit so there is enough to have something different each day.

Now to the pools, there was 2 pools a top and bottom, the top was one depth all the way along but had seats so you could sit in the water and bubbles and the bottom pool was deep at one end with a water fall, both of which we enjoyed. The thing that made this hotel greet to us was it was my birthday while we were there and without any prompting they sang me happy birthday and bought me a cake which i felt was lovely. I would definitely stay here again.




Kata area itself was just what we wanted, a lovely clean and not over crowded beach, plenty of shops to look at, night markets and restaurants everywhere. Our favourite and an absolute MUST is Danny's Bar Restaurant 44, the food here is a good price and the duck dishes they do are to die for. This became our local for the 12 days and we ate there every lunch and dinner it was delicious.

While in Kata we found another house sit in South Korea, which we are currently at hence the delay in blogging as I don't want to catch up with myself. So off we go to Incheon, stay tuned for my blog on 2 cats and an apartment.

Hotels we stayed in are:
Chanalia Flora Resort, £202 for 12 nights. We booked the room through their own site as we got free fruit platter on arrival, 15% off drinks and 15% off food in their restaurant and also breakfast was included in the price. Its the first time Booking.com was more expensive. The rooms were big and modern with a large shower room and large wardrobe space. TV reception was good and we WIFI was OK a little spotty now and then but the hotel dealt with this when informed.