Tags
ambience, Anantara Vacation Club, fire, one bedroom villa, Phuket, pool, restaurant, salt, salt brick, sea, Thailand, villa
So the planets aligned for me to arrange for a birthday trip for the husband. Essentially, I had managed to snag a great deal for the Anantara Vacation Club at Phuket! I have wanted to stay at the Anantara for the longest time and finally, I have the best excuses to go there for a stay!
I guess, Singapore is a really convenient place to go to other places in the region.
And while I’m not a huge fan of budget airlines, the ease of availability of the budget airlines to common destinations in South East Asia is definitely welcoming. Especially for short flights!
So we took a morning flight via Tiger Air and we got lucky as we got emergency exit seats. Its always good to have more stetching room on board!
When we reached Phuket, we found the Anantara rep outside the airport and made our way to the resort.
When we reached, we were warmly welcome. But, alas, our villa was not ready until 12 pm.
The grounds look lovely!
So we decided to have breakfast at Turtle Village which is just right across the street.
We found The Coffee Club.
Yep, we were kinda hungry! The food was fine. I didn’t have high expectations and the food was surprisingly not awful 😛
We hung around at the cafe for a while until about 12 pm.
As we had an early morning, we were eager to check into the villa and have a nap maybe? Also, I was excited to see if Anantara lives up to its reputation.
So, yes, our villa is ready! *Excited*
My gosh, the villa is huge! I had booked a one-bedroom villa and it comes with a pool. My husband was impressed with the villa and I was mighty proud of myself!
So the staff who showed us to the room introduced it to us. And the kitchen was highly functional. With stoves, pots and pans, knives, washing machine and dryer etc. When we asked about detergent, we were told we need to ring housekeeping for it and its complimentary. Which is great and a tad surprising as many hotels would charge for it. Very nice touch.
And my favourite: outdoor shower. I’ve really fallen in love with outdoor showers since the trip to Bali. Definitely one of the best way to have a shower!
As time passed, we had to decide where to go for dinner. And we decided on Sea.Fire.Salt which is on Anantara grounds.
On our way to dinner, we passed by the concierge and since I didn’t make any plans for sightseeing at all, we decided to take a half day island tour. Which suited us very well as we didn’t want to get tired from sightseeing and we didn’t have to wake up early.
So we walked across to Sea.Fire.Salt. And this is it.
The restaurant is right in front of the beach and one should go early to catch the sunset.
The setting was lovely! And yes, Sea.Fire.Salt is not the cheapest restaurant around but hey, we are on a vacation! Why say no to great ambience and food? Besides, we are celebrating the birthday of a wonderful man!
This was a complimentary starter. Not very fantastic.
We started with a seafood sampler. Oh, the tuna was so good!
We were given some salt for dipping if required. We tried them but ummm, too salty.
I ordered the Spicy sea bass on Himalayan salt brick.
This dish was quite an experience. The salt brick was warm and it kept the sea bass warm. The Spicy sauce that accompanied the dish was really good, albeit spicy.
I took my time to go through this dish as I really enjoyed it a lot. But I found out that towards the end, as the fish had been on the salt brick for too long and some of the salt brick melted due to the heat, the part of fish that was in contact with the brick became very very salty.
The husband loves steak and he ordered this angus steak tenderloin which was very nicely done as well.
So happy that we had good food on his birthday.
We ended the meal with a cup of healthy smoothie each 🙂
It was really very nice meal and I would love to go back to Sea.Fire.Salt again some day! Luckily, Phuket ain’t far from Singapore 😛
And then back in the hotel room, there’s another surprise!
A birthday cake that I had arranged with the hotel beforehand 🙂
Many Happy Returns!!!
lapetitetraveller 