Honeymoon part 1: Phuket, Thailand

After an overnight stay at the Heathrow IBIS, a bus to the ter­mi­nal, check-in and an EAT steak sand­wich, we were on our Thai Air­ways flight to Bangkok.

The loca­tion of our hon­ey­moon was kept a tight lipped secret until the last moments; Sam believed we were headed for Japan.

The 10 hour flight passed smoothly, and I wrote up our wed­ding day, much like this. Con­nect 4, some films and food passed the time.

At Bangkok we waited four hours for our con­nect­ing flight to Phuket. 12:30am our time, we were exhausted. Whilst queue­ing for immi­gra­tion, the slow­est mov­ing queue ever, we spoke with a Korean man about life and travelling.

The 1h30 Phuket flight felt instant, asleep on take off, awake on land­ing (with a bump). Enter the sear­ing 38C trop­i­cal heat. Almost there, just one taxi ride and we were at our des­ti­na­tion, the Indigo Pearl, Nai Yang.

Greeted with an iced tea, com­plete with star of anise and cool­ing face flan­nel, we checked in. The Pearl’s dec­o­ra­tion and theme was a seam­less fusion of metal sculp­ture, tin min­ing, wood, tools and lux­ury, all with an obses­sive atten­tion to detail.

After a shower at the fit­ness cen­tre (and a bug the size of my hand), our room was ready. WOW, the room was incred­i­ble. Lotus flow­ers sat on the super king sized bed, and the hotel’s theme con­tin­ued; toi­let roll hold­ers were shaped like giant bolts, huge wooden slid­ing doors sep­a­rated the bed and bath­rooms, a large win­dow into the bath­room from the bed­room was intrigu­ing and there was a deli­cious yet sub­tle ori­en­tal smell of Jas­mine and Champaka.

Sleep­ing from 3pm until 5pm, we awoke starv­ing. Too sleepy to ven­ture out, we ordered room ser­vice. A serv­ing of chicken satay, prawns in coconut, deep fried soft shelled crab and some que­sadil­las shortly arrived, it all looked and tasted gor­geous. The ever smil­ing and help­ful Indigo Pearl staff had a sur­prise for us; com­pli­men­tary exotic fruit plat­ter, heart shaped choco­late desserts and a bot­tle of Cham­pagne. Our jaws almost hit the floor.

Per­fectly sated and in par­adise, we fell asleep to the thun­der­ing down pour of a trop­i­cal storm, and an air con­di­tioner turned up full.