Originally Posted by
bgdc
With the resort so far removed from any town, you are forced to use the hotels shuttles or car service. So if you want a decent meal you can drop $20 total for a round trip to Karon or Kata. Otherwise, you're stuck in the hotel eating highly overpriced food that's decent but not nearly on the level of anything at say Mom Tri's restaurants. I guess the remote nature of the resort sort of forces visitors to determine if it's worthwhile to pay a king's ransom to leave or pay a king's ransom to eat at the hotel. We paid more for a dinner at the resort than we did at Mom Tri's boathouse restaurant (one of Phukets best restaurants)...there's something so very wrong about that.
so far removed? Really? The shuttle was 100 BHT (about $3 USD) and took less than 5 mins to Patong, a city that I wouldn't want to be any closer to that the Le Meridien. To the South, our average taxi ride to Karon was 5-10 mins. Remember the hotel has the word "resort" in it's name, so I hope you weren't expecting an in-city hotel? At the same time the hotel has it's own secluded beach "relax bay" to itself, providing a rare beach on Phuket that's not overrun with tourists, hawkers, etc.
Mama Tri's had so many locations (let alone billboards and side businesses) that we avoided it like the plague.
Just outside the hotel's gate was a very inexpensive, but tasty local restaurant that's impossible to miss. If the hotel was holding you "hostage" why didn't you walk over there?