Feb. 14th - Great way to spend Valentine’s Day - Phuket, Thailand

We woke up at 6:15, to change and grab a cab.  Poor Tony, he was a little tired from worrying about the lizard waking up on his face. I slept ok though.  Luckily, there were cabs right outside our hotel ready to take people to the airport.  These taxi drivers really raise the prices for tourist, it’s kind of ridiculous how far they push it.  But at 6:30 in the morning we just said whatever & didn't feel like dealing with it.

It was only a 15 minute drive to the Samui airport, which is so cute.  It’s so small but has nice shops & places to eat heading to the gate, ALL outside.  The entire airport is outside.

Waiting for breakfast at Koh Samui Airport

We were both a little hungry so we stopped at a coffee shop and picked up our Valentine’s Day breakfast: chocolate croissant for Debi & regular croissant for Tony.

Breakfast served!

Then we headed to our gate, where I blogged waiting for our flight and Tony go coffee spilled on him, but it was fine.  We got it all cleaned up!

 A 40 minute flight later, we landed in Phuket.

Air shot - arriving at Phuket

We took a 50 minute drive to our hotel, where we just couldn't wait to see it.

Our HOTEL!

We were really ready for a nice resort type hotel, nice room, regular shower, good toilet seat, comfy bed, sense of feeling clean, good balcony, & amazing views.  Well, since we had never been to the Amari Coral Beach resort before, she upgraded us to the better room.

Straight on view from our Balcony!

Looking to the right from our Balcony

Looking to our left from our Balcony, our private Beach

View from lobby, over looking the lounge/bar area

Hallelujah - this place is incredible!!!!! From the welcoming of fresh, lime smelling cold hand towels, to the open air lobby, the 2 different pools, 3 different restaurants, outside spa in the hills, bar on a pier, & access to our private beach area, we were in heaven!  So she upgraded us to the nicer rooms, however, it took us like 10 minutes to walk to it, this place is BIG!!! It's another 7 minute walk to the spa area, and then an even longer walk out to the pier.

Here's some shots from our room:

After we got situated in our room (we unpacked everything since we'll be here the next 4 days and our stuff just needed to breath), we walked 10 minutes back to the lobby to talk to the travel agent that was there.  We wanted to see about the day trips to Koh Phi Phi islands & the Phang Nga Bay:

Talking to the travel agent and Tony feeling like a king in this chair

We booked a day trip for tomorrow to the Koh Phi Phi islands, this is where we get to see Maya Bay, where the movie the Beach was filmed.

We left our hill top hotel and walked into town.

View on our walk

We were both craving some good Indian food and had seen lots of signs on our drive in, so we were on the mission to find Indian food.  We first found a place that had 2 big signs saying Indian food, but when they sat us down, they gave us a different menu.  We asked them for the Indian menu, but they said it didn't get served till 2pm and it was only 12:15 pm.  So we continued on.  Finally, we saw another Indian food menu sitting on the side of the street, and looked good.  But there were all these people working on construction here and we didn't understand where the restaurant was.  Finally, a security guy came over, and pointed us through the construction, down this long sidewalk, and Tony & I were both like, umm....where are we going, are we going to be ok, what's going on, but then finally, we came across the restaurant and it was part of a hotel that had a different entrance.  Looked fine!

We sat down and ate some good chicken curry & chicken tandoori.  Then ordered garlic Nan & roti.  It was all very good food, we loved having a Valentine's Day Indian food lunch! We were STUFFED after lunch, but continued to walk around, shop, and explore.

Indian Food for Lunch

We then found this area that had a ton of huts that were bars, hidden among all the shopping stands.  It was sooooooo hot out that we couldn't sit for a drink, but figured we will try this area at night time a different night out.  So we walked back towards our hotel.  For some reason Tony can manage finding our way around Phuket, in Pantong Beach, but he couldn't understand how to get from our hotel room to our lobby (this was my job).

Tons of hut bars while walking around shopping

When we got back to the hotel, we wanted to just relax by the pool. We decided to go to the further pool from our room since the closer one seemed like a bunch of older people.  Here we laid out, swam, and then it was time for some paddle ball in the pool.

Swimming at one of the pools

This pool didn't have a so called shallow side, so standing on my tippy toes I barely got my shoulders out of the water.  However, I think I did pretty good against Tony, who had the advantage of being so much taller than me.  It was a lot of fun and we thought we were pretty funny!

We then saw the Italian restaurant getting all set-up for the Valentine's Day dinner.  Who would of thought that the Thai's were so into Valentine's Day!  Even walking around the town, all the other places had signs, balloons, banners, we even saw one advertising an Elvis Presley live entertainment tribute during dinner.  It was really funny to see all this and how corny it all looked, but again FUN.

Setting up Valentine's Day dinner - this was made of ALL real flowers, pretty cool

After the Valentine's Day pool swim, we got cleaned up and sat by our outside bar & had a drink while enjoying the view around us:

Our pier off in the distance - where we walk to later

The spa is the huts on the left and then the trail heading to the pier

Then we got antsy and decided to walk with our drinks to the pier.  The sun started to go down & the moon light evening was looking very romantic for Valentine's Day!

Walking to the pier for a Valentine's Day Drink (new dress)

We made it to the pier and there was a bar out there as well.  So we got another drink to sit back and enjoy the stars, the water around us & each other.

On the pier

There were these 2 other girls from Australia there too who were a whoot!  They were here celebrating their 30th birthdays, talk about a good way to celebrate.  So we were able to take pictures of each other for each other!

Cheers

Here are some more pictures on the pier, we just figured out our twilight hand held setting instead of this other twilight setting!  Good thing we have only 3 days left of vacation!

View of Phuket behind Tony from the pier

Juts thought this was a cool shot

Pier

After our photo shoot, we headed back to the Itailan restauarnt to have our Valentine's Day dinner.  Usually Tony & I love our Valentine's day dinner at home!!!  We just stay home and make our own crab legs, steak & baked potato over a candle lit dinner, but I must say celebrating in Thailand kind of beats our tradition!
We arrived (after 15 minute walk) to La Gritta:

The sign outside the hotel restaurant for our Valentine's Day Dinner - it's Italian Food 

Tony got greeted with a rose, but it was for him to give to me.  SO YEAH, I got a flower on Valentine's Day, OH along with a card.  We had swapped cards in the morning.

I got a rose!

Then it was time to order dinner.  We got bread with oil, rock lobster ricotta, prosciutto pizza, & gnocchi.  It was ALL delicious!

Yummy bread, Olive oil & balsamic

Prosciutto Pizza

Ricotta Rock Lobster

We ate all our food, while enjoying the romantic view:

Our dinner view

Finally, we were beat!  From getting up super early, to traveling, to doing all our events during the day, we had a wonderful Valentine's Day here in Phuket.  I think next year is going to look pretty lame hahaha

Happy Valentine;s Day - haha we loved the cheesiness of it all, well I did at least