Holiday in Kata, Phuket, part 2

Time share apartment in Kata

Originally, we were planning to be aboard a Chinese junk today sailing our way through Phang Nga bay, however, sometimes even the best laid plans are derailed. 

As it turned out, yesterday morning Kasper woke up with a massive ear infection and very sore throat, so we went to the doctor (recommended by Premier Property) where he got an antibiotic injection as well as pills enough to open a minor pharmacy to be eaten over the next 5 days. So needless to say, yesterday was spent relaxing in the room and taking care of the patient. I also managed to squeeze in a bit of afternoon pool time to work on my tan.

Due to his illness, we also postponed our little sailing trip, so that's now planned for Sunday instead. I am also happy to report that Kasper is already feeling much better today, so it looks like he will finally recover from his 3-week cold thanks to some Thai medicine :-)

This gives me a great opportunity to post some nice images from our time share apartment here in Kata Beach. Below are some images from our 1 bedroom apartment.

The property in Kata

Balcony outside living room

Kitchen

Living room

Living room with view to bedroom

dressing table in bedroom + entry to bathroom

The bathroom

The bathroom

The bedroom with view of second balcony

Bedroom with king size bed :-)

Bedroom TV unit + door closed

Door open to living room

Holiday in Kata, Phuket, part 1

There's nothing as good as getting away from average winter weather and getting a bit of warmth and sun to recharge your batteries. So even though Melbourne winter isn't really that bad, we booked a two-week holiday to Kata in Phuket with a 3-day stop-over in Singapore on our way back to Australia.

The main purpose of our trip was really to test our impulse time-share purchase in Phuket from when we were here in February... Premier Property has 2 properties available currently (soon to be 3) to choose from in Phuket. While we got a tour of their Bang Tao property back in February, we thought it would be cool to check out the Kata property and spend our free bonus week + the free week Yasmin won here...

Kata Premier Suites property - time-share apartments. We are staying in the top floor apartment above the sign (two middle balconies)

The property here in Kata has 18 apartments, so a nice and quiet place in walking distance to all restaurants, shops etc. in Kata, and only 500m from the beach, which is approx. 1.5km long - perfect for an early morning walk.

Area we live in - hard to believe you are in Thailand. Notice: no overhead electricity cables...

So far, we have mostly spent our days lounging at the pool working on our tans, but we have - already - picked out our favourite restaurant, which has extremely well priced food (European and Asian) AND well priced wine, which is a bit unusual in Thailand. It is called the Wine Connection. We went there last night for a nice dinner with a good bootle of Australian Shiraz for only 500 Bath!

Wine Connection Restaurant in Kata, Phuket

Tomorrow (Thursday 9th August), we are meeting with one of the member coordinators for Premier Property, so we expect to get some more in-depth information on how to use the time-share facility for properties all over the World.

We are also planning a sailing trip with a Chinese Junk to Phang Nga Bay on Friday, which is mainly known for James Bond Island. http://www.phuket.com/magazine4/tour.htm

More about this in the next blog entry...

  

Our little (un-invited) pet in the garden

It is finally summer in Melbourne :-) We are enjoying the warm weather very much, now that we have some fantastic outdoor areas in the garden to sun bake or sit and read a book.

As usual, the weather got quite hot around New Year's Eve - we had a stretch of 4-5 days with temperatures from 35-40 degrees during the day, and 25-32 degrees during the night!! 32 degrees at night when you are trying to sleep is not that comfortable! Hurray for our evaporative cooling, which kept the temperature in the house at a comfortable level.

We both had time off work during the Xmas break, so we were looking forward to relaxing a bit and maybe go on a few day trips to Bendigo/Grampians, but unfortunately first Yasmin came down with tonsillitis just before the Xmas break, and then Kasper caught it and was sick between Xmas and New Year. :-(

This year, we celebrated Christmas Day (25th) with Karina & Shayne at their place. On our way there we encountered a hail storm, and we could read in the papers that some parts of Melbourne had a "white" Christmas with lots of hail covering the ground so everything was white!! Some of the hails were as big as tennis balls, so the northern suburbs copped quite a bit of hail damage to houses and cars.

We had a wonderful time with Karina and Shayne, as per usual :-)

New Year's Eve we were just the two of us at home. We had planned a lovely gourmet menu, - for starter we had prawns with blue cheese wrapped in prosciutto and grilled on the BBQ, for main a juicy T-bone steak with home made garlic butter, Greek potatoes and bruschetta with artichoke hearts, red onion, tomato and parsley topping. For dessert, which we ate quite a bit later, a home made almond meal and pear tart, which tasted very much like the Danish "kransekage" that you get New Year's Eve, so that was delicious.

At 10 min to 12AM, we poured a glass of bubbly and went up the hill 50 m from our house, where we have views towards Melbourne CBD. Our plan was to catch the fireworks live while toasting in the New Year. As a bonus, it turned out that a lot of the locals of Sanctuary Lakes also had some fireworks, so for once we experienced a lot of fireworks while toasting in the new year! We could see the Melbourne fireworks in the distance, but the local show was definitely better :-)

This week, we both went back to work, so the holiday is over for now until February where we are going to Thailand, can't wait!!!

Yesterday, Kasper had lunch in the garden and when he got up to go back inside, he caught the head of a reptile on the lawn, and rushed back in. First thought was: "is it a snake?" But as it turned out, it was a little (or not so little) Blue Tongue Lizard, which are common in Australia. They live on insects and snails, and as we had a lot of snails here when we moved in, we assume that's why our little lizard has moved into our garden! It lives in the lawn edge, where there are some high pavers separating the lawn from the paved area.

Here is the little bugger:

January 8, 2012

There is a great article on the Blue Tongue Lizard here: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2000/02/01/2662923.htm
Luckily it is not dangerous, as Bailey seems to be quite interested in sniffing the grass in the corner of the garden where it lives... Maybe we can hope she will be able to scare it away...

Until next time...