The Crown Plaza is a 4-star hotel in the quiet Karon Beach section of Phuket. It has several nice pools, bars and restaurants. Though not on the beach, the Crowne Plaza is located directly across the street.

Upon check in, after an 18-hour flight and a harrowing taxi ride, we were kindly greeted with a cooling lemon infused drink and cool wet towels. A bellboy loaded our luggage and we were driven to our villa on a golf cart, via the narrow walkway paths of the hotel grounds.

We had a Lagoon Villa room with a King bed. There were flower petals elaborately placed on the bed in the shape of a heart. There were flower petals and blossoms floating in our oversized bathtub. The bathroom was very large with the tub for two and a separate shower. Our room had a private terrace overlooking the narrow lagoon, and a plunge pool and outdoor shower. The plunge pool was the best part about our room. Phuket was very hot and humid in June and we looked forward to our afternoon dips in the plunge pool. Our room cost 7200 Thai baht = $190/night.

The main pool was very nice and never crowded. We appreciated the tiki hut which covered a small portion of the pool. It was nice to be in the water without having to be in the sun. Mojitos and daiquiris were the favorite drinks at the pool’s swim up bar. My husband tried a Rambutan daiquiri, made with the native Thai fruit. A rambutan is a strange looking fruit. The outside looks like a kiwi with longer spiky red hair. The inside looks like an egg, has the texture of a pear, the color of a melon and the taste is a cross between a pear and melon. The bartender showed us how to peel the fruit and remove the pit, and let us try to the fruit. It was from this bartender, named Porn (I kid you not!), that we learned the hotel was recently sold and would become a Movenpick hotel within a week.

The hotel has several restaurants, a gym, an art gallery, and a couple of pools.
We spent a week at this hotel and then a week at the JW Marriott Phuket. Although the Marriott is a more luxurious hotel, I preferred the Crowne Plaza because of the fantastic villa room with the plunge pool and the location was so much better.

One tip we’d like to pass on: book your taxi to the airport the day before your flight. We asked the front desk to call us a taxi when we checked out, and it cost 3 times what it cost us to get from the airport to the hotel. The front desk clerk told us it would have been much cheaper if we had booked it 24 hours in advance.

NOTE: This Crowne Plaza hotel is now a Movenpick hotel. It changed hands the week after we stayed there.