When my eldest sister, T, told me the a new Westin Resort was opening in Phuket and they were running some really good opening promo; I quickly went to make the all the necessary bookings.

We planned and decided to go a week before the school holidays, just so the flight was half the price (of the school holiday’s rate). T too was going with Tasha, and Annie, her helper.

♥30th August♥

We arrived in Phuket early in the morning. The Westin Siray Bay Resort is ~40mins from the airport, so by the time we went through immigration, collected our checked in bags, hired a taxi and got to the resort, it was late morning. We were lucky, our room was ready. T had to wait for hers, and it wasn’t ready until almost 3pm!

The room was sea facing, and had such a spectacular view. With 2 hollywood single beds + a complimentary child’s rollaway bed, it still felt spacious (although Daddy complained a bit). I forced the girls to take their naps (because I wanted to take mine too, since I was packing till late midnight, and woke up 5am that morning) once the Ooos and Aaaas died down in the room.

Zara slept in her rollaway, Daddy has the huge bed to himself and I shared mine with Zaria.

We woke up around 2pm, and the girls were eager to get to the pool. So off we went, and met Tasha there.

The rest of the first day was spent with the girls in the pool, and exploring the facilities in the hotel.

For dinner, oh, I must share this, because it still makes us pissed just thinking about it.

We (including T, Tasha and Annie) thought we’d go to a near by restaurant OUTSIDE the hotel and thought we’d walk.

It was dark, and we didn’t know how far we must walk. Half way walking, a driver in a Westin car asked us to hop on. He’d send us, for FREE. So, ok, we got him to drive us to the restaurant (which was less than 1km from the hotel).

This restaurant, Plaey Leam, is those outdoor type (like our Warong Tomyam); menu showing prices of Tomyam 450Baht; prawn cakes 400Baht etc etc. Reasonable right? So, we ordered Tomyam, prawn cakes, a fried fish, a vege, pineapple fried rice, drinks for everyone, I think that was it.

Before we settled the bill, the person in charged came over to tell us that the driver ordered fried rice, did we want to pay for it? We thought, ok, we’d pay, just as a treat to him.

Who knows, soon after, the man waved to the driver, and both of them went to the back, and less than 3minutes, the driver was out, stuffing something, probably fried rice (?), into the pocket!

And the bill came. Freaking ~5000Baht (~RM500). The driver’s fried rice was 200Baht! All the dishes was double the price of what was indicated on the menu, apparently, he gave us double the portion of everything. We complained, and he just gave us the grin, “This no expensip, this Thai plice.”

So we got blardy conned, by the restaurant, and the driver! Daddy was fuming; but T said, the consololation was the food was not bad.

♥31st August♥

After breakfast, we went to check out the Westin Kids’ Club. An adult have to accompany children below 4 (Zaria) but for children above 4, you can actually leave them with the staff, and they will have activities from 9am to 5pm to keep the kids occupied. There were also lots of arts and crafts to be done and most of them were free.

One of the staff taught the girls how to draw chicken, and Zaria immediately started working on her (four legged chicken) piece.

At 11am, thanks to my sis who prebooked our seats (only 11 seats per trip), we followed the hotel free shuttle to Phuket town.

We spent all our time shopping in Ocean and Robinson, and had late lunch; and then took the free shuttle back at 3:30pm.

Children didn’t want to nap, and preferred to do more swimming.

That night, we walked out to Look Mai, another restaurant near Westin (only 2 within walking distance). This time, we checked all the prices and made sure ‘small’ portion was ordered. The prices were definitely more reasonable, and the cooking more homely.

The girls wanted to watch TV when we got back to our room, but Zaria knocked off 5mins into the show (no nap == early bed time). Tasha came over to sleep with us, and shared a bed with Zara. Daddy moved to the roll over, and claimed it was more comfortable than the heavenly bed.