Our first family holiday of 2016 brought us to Phuket, Thailand. While this was not our first trip to Phuket (we travelled there when it was just the two of us, for our first babymoon and subsequently for Jah’s 1^st holiday at 7 months), this is the first trip where we have ventured out further than 15 minutes away from the airport. No I kid you not! We always stayed 10 minutes away from the airport on all previous trips and basically parked ourselves in the vicinity of our hotel. We never visited Patong or any of the shopping malls ever. Ironically, we decided to stay almost 1.5 hours away from the airport while on holiday with 2 kids and ventured out every night by Tuktuk, for dinner. Perhaps parenthood really does make you stronger, more adventurous or just flat out mad! :p

The kids were really excited about this holiday and we were all up by 5am for our really early 8am flight. The first milestone we hit this holiday? Jah no longer needing his CARES Safety harness! He was constantly coaching Bella on how she should sit still in hers and that he could handle the ‘big people’ seatbelt now. 🙂 Honestly the CARES safety harness has been a great help for us when travelling with the kiddos. You can read more about it in our previous post here.

We were picked up by our hotel private transfer and we managed to fit 4 adults, 2 kids, 3 suitcases and 2-3 handcarrys. Ermm yes we were there on a beach holiday but don’t ask me why we had so many suitcases. :p The transfer was about an hour long to the hotel and Jah and I were lucky to have a nice massage function in our seats. 🙂

We stayed at the Katathani which is located at Kata Noi. It essentially is right at the end of the Kata area and spanned a really large area, with two different wings. We booked 2 interconnecting Junior Suite rooms and were located at the Thani Wing which is closer to the beach. Each room came with either a king bed or twin beds + a sofa bed and they covered the sofa bed in our room with nice clean sheets, pillows and a blanket so that Jah could use it. We also had a really decent view of the pool and the beachfront.

The hotel had many pools throughout its property which was one of the main draw for us when we were deciding where to stay. However we ended up playing at the same pool (right in front of our block) every morning before heading out to the beach and sea. The beach was located in an inlet and the waves were rather mild (usually got a bit ‘fiercer’ around noon time) so we can venture out with the kids. While the beach is not a private one, it felt pretty private to us because we had a guard watching the entrance from our hotel to the beach and you wouldn’t really venture out to Kata Noi Beach if you are not a guest at the hotel.

The kids also had a swell time at the kids pool with their toys and crocodile float which we bought from one of the many shops in the area. They also insisted on coming back from the beach at 11am every day without fail so that we could join the Aqua Aerobics class. Oh we had tons of fun and laughter with that class alright.

 

The kids club at Katathani is located at the Bhuri Wing so it was a 5 minute walk from our block but the kids were more than willing to make the walk before lunch. The kids club is supervised and had tons of toys, games and even a ball pit. They have paid activities and free ones and even an outdoor play area. The kids really wanted to play outdoors but I wouldn’t let them because it was just too hot at 12noon. We didn’t go for any of the paid activities but there was more than enough to keep them occupied. In fact it was really tough trying to get them to leave and go to lunch. *grrrr* The thing I liked about the Kids club was the fact that they have a very flexible policy. You could choose to drop off your child with the staff or you could stay in the kids club with your child. We had one too many bad experiences with hotels who insist that the adults have to leave even when we just want to spend time with our kids in the club. We had no such problem at Katathani.

We really had a lot of fun at the Katathani, my only gripe was the fact that it was almost a 1.5 hour journey to the airport which can be really tiring. But the facilities and service far outweigh that little inconvenience. I have a feeling, this might be our go to place in Phuket from now on. 🙂

Want to know what else we did in Phuket with the kids and how we managed to have authentic Thai food even though we had kids with us? Stay tuned for our next Phuket 2016 post!

JahBella’s Mummy