Thailand - Renaisannce Phuket and JW Marriot Khao (Page 1 or 2)

One bedroom Ocean view villa @ Renaissance Phuket, Thailand

Our adventure to Thailand...we stayed at two Marriot hotels, both pretty fantastic in their own way.

The first and last was the Renaissance in Phuket , we stayed here the first 3 days then went to Khao Lat and stayed at the JW Marriot Khao Lat then returned to the Renaissance in Phuket.

Both are beautiful resorts in their own unique way.

Phuket Beach

Entrance to Renaissance Phuket

The Renaissance was smaller and much more modern with the best parts being the private waterfront villa with pool and the amazing breakfast buffet at Loca Vore (1 of 3 restaurants on site) consisting of amazing fresh tropical fruits, smoothly and juice bar, omelette station, salad station, dessert station, juices, Thai dishes, pastry buffet, and more.  The restaurants on site are pretty good as well however not quit as good as going off the resort which requires a cabby to stay with you, in that he sits in the parking lot while you are in the restaurant eating and wait to take you back to the resort so you don't end up in the wrong hands like broken palace or some human trafficking incident.  This really puts us at ease, it was heart warming to know how well the Marriot hotels take care of their guests well being and safety.

View from inside the villa to the pool

How does transportation work: the Renaissance has a shuttle that takes you to shopping areas nearby for free as well as sister resorts (which I will mention later). If you are planning to go off the resort, they arrange a driver for you for a standard fee that stays with you throughout your trip to ensure that you get back to the resort safely.  We even opted to get a driver that drove us to Khao Lat and he was going to pick us up 3 days later, during the to Khao Lat, the driver can take you site seeing or whatever you want for the same rate, not like our taxi here where you pay for one way. There, you pay for his entire day for the same price as a one way trip.

Sister resorts:  Marriot hotels are big and world wide, so when you stay at a close by resort, you can venture over to the sister resorts and use their amenities (I.e., pools, restaurants)

We wandered over two sister resorts in Phuket, one was Marriot Vacation club, one was Marriot, both were pretty amazing.  We also wandered to a nearby resort not related to Marriot and was super happy that we chose to stay with Marriot.

Restaurant on site that is worth trying:
Loca Vore - which where they serve an amazing international breakfast buffet, lunch and dinner
Takieng - an al cart menu of Thai food, also amazing and worth trying, however, as you may or may not aware, food on resorts are much pricier than offsite restaurants. With that said, you would need a driver to go offsite unless you rented a car which we did not.

Restaurant off site that we ventured to with our driver in Phuket:
We love Kindee restaurant:  my favorite was the wing beans dish, amazingly good and since I been back to the states, the closet restaurant that had this dish is in Portland, Oregon (Pok Pok) 
We took the shuttle over to a JW Marriot Phuket, a sister resort for a JW Japanese Sunday Brunch at their Kabuki Japanese Cuisine theatre (reservations are needed and very pricey even in Thailand)

Kabuki

Page 2...for JW Marriot Khao Lat