Our First Week in Thailand – Diamond Cliff Resort

We arrived in Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand on Oct 9, the day before our 20th anniversary! Because of the quarantine requirements, we weren’t able to leave our hotel room until we received our negative PCR results (which we received at 11 pm that night). We were both pretty tired, and after unpacking and showering we ended up going to bed quite early.

Our First Day (and 20th Anniversary!)

The next morning was our Anniversary, of course! We were staying at the Diamond Cliff Resort and Spa for a week before moving on. It’s a 5-star resort just on the outskirts of Patong Beach. Money-wise, we got a great deal because of Covid and the timing; many resorts and hotels were priced very low when we booked in mid-September. 

Our package included breakfast, which we enjoyed every morning. What a spread! 

Luckily for us, we arrived during the Vegetarian Festival, where many Thai follow a vegan diet for a week to help cleanse their bodies. The (massive) breakfast room had a large section labelled veg, and there was so much variety!

We usually ate toast with jam, cereal, a rice or noodle dish, loads of fruit (mango, pineapple, watermelon and dragonfruit to start), and fresh fruit juice (many we’d never tasted before). We certainly never went hungry!

Service was amazing; there was no soy milk the first day, but after I requested it, *fresh* soy milk was available every morning, hot or cold!

The table we chose to sit at every day was outdoors, with a beautiful view over the water.

After breakfast, we explored the resort a bit, then walked to the beach and through some of Patong. It was some visual overload, with all the signs and motorbikes! We saw a couple of street dogs and lots of birds, but not a whole lot of tourists. The beach was gorgeous, soft silky sand and hardly a person in sight…we felt like we had the whole beach to ourselves!

We ate lunch at a small restaurant across from the beach: Aoddy’s bar pizza and grill. We had Tofu Pad Thai without fish sauce or egg, and it was yummy.

After lunch we went back to the resort and explored a bit more before going to our room for a shower and nap, to prepare for our afternoon massage Wayne had booked as a treat.

The massage was beautiful! We got to choose from 3 scented oil mixtures, and it was an hour of bliss. It was so incredibly relaxing!

After the massage, we got dressed up to go out for our Anniversary date supper.

We went down to the Sea Salt Bar and Grill, located on the beach directly across from the resort. We ate at a table outside, the wind was blowing, the waves were crashing… it was wonderful. 

After supper we hoped to swim, but the pools (the resort has 2) closed at 7. So we explored a bit more and listened to the frogs roar (they’re really, really loud when they get going!) before going to our room.

A couple of video calls with family and we were off to bed, tired but happy!

A Bit About The Diamond Cliff Resort

So, I mentioned this is a 5-star resort. If 5-star is what amazing is, then it definitely hits the mark! 

We’re not what you’d consider 5-star resort people, so why did we pick this place? Like I said, the price was great because we booked early (in September) and, with covid, a lot of places have dropped their prices. Also, we’ve never had a honeymoon (or a vacation away together, anywhere) so we decided to splurge on this for ourselves for our 20th.

Diamond Cliff is built on a cliff (Oh. My. God. The stairs!) and covers around 20 acres. Our room was an ocean-view, and overlooked the Andaman Sea. What a view! Honestly, we were unable to take a bad photo. We spent hours on that balcony, listening to the surf; we went at the end of the rainy season, and although it *still* hasn’t rained during the day, it was really windy that first week, and the surf was really rough.

Our room was luxurious; the bed was really, really big, and comfortable, and the pillows soft and perfect! There were robes for each of us, and *4* bottles of water daily! (you can’t drink the tap water here, or brush your teeth with it – well, you can, but it’s risky – so 4 bottles were awesome)! Our room was cleaned daily, right down to a mopped floor. We’ve never felt so pampered.

About those stairs: it’s so steep a climb that our calves *hurt* around day 3, for 2 days straight. We understood pretty quick why they offer a shuttle service up and down to the road 🙂

There are a few restaurants at the Cliff, but all but one were closed during our visit (Covid). We only ate breakfast there; we were too busy exploring at other times! 

There are two large pools, one by the restaurant overlooking the ocean, and the Waterfall Pool closer to our room (and the one we used). We went for a dip pretty much once a day. There’s a waterslide there (which we used) and a swim-up bar (which we didn’t).

The landscaping is just beautiful; you can’t turn but you find another view, another water feature, more landscaping.

We even found a hidden koi pond when we went down some back stairs when we were exploring!

So, in sum: if you ever have a chance, visit the Diamond Cliff Resort in Patong Bay, Phuket, Thailand! You won’t be disappointed!

Oct 11 & 12 – Initial Explorations of Patong Beach and Restaurants

We were pretty jet-lagged for the first couple of days, although we didn’t *feel* tired…until we did, suddenly, and we crashed early. On the 11th (our 2nd full day) we lay down for a nap at 3 pm and woke at 8 pm! Whoops 🙂

We spent a fair bit of time just wandering the north end of Patong, looking at restaurants and the people and the foliage and the resorts and the hotels…it really is a visual overwhelm, at first. And there are so many motorcycles, and they drive on the left side of the road here, so that took some getting used to. 

The sidewalks are…let’s say “iffy”; they’re narrow, and rough, and it’s not unusual to have motorcycles parked on them, or chairs, or lamp posts, or trees…

Crossing the road is an adventure, though we’re used to it by now. But definitely, that first week especially was stressful! The road rules aren’t followed; people swerve between lanes as if they’re all one lane, and will pass each other on either side, and a one-way lane can *never* be assumed to be a one-way lane. But all that aside, it’s incredibly…flowy; we’ve never witnessed an accident, and they sort of swerve to avoid pedestrians crossing the road. Which is a good thing!

We searched out a couple of restaurants with vegan food and ate some yummies like sweet and sour tofu with rice at Restaurant 9 2nd.

And “chicken” sandwiches at the Veganecessity Cafe:

Also popped into one or two of the Family Marts which are on pretty much every corner, for some masks and soy milk.

Between the culture shock, and the visual craziness, and the jet lag and the messed-up sleep patterns … we had a bit of a breakdown on the evening of the 12th. I had tried to start updating my blog, and it was messed up. I didn’t deal with it well! 

But after questioning *everything* about our life and our plans and our abilities and our dreams for our future, we finally recognized that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves and cut ourselves some emotional slack. So we did, and that helped. 

Sometimes, you just have to give yourself a break and acknowledge what you *can* do!

Oct 13 & 14 – Grocery Score and PCR Swab Test

On the 13th we decided to do a preliminary run to the Jungceylon Mall, since we had to go there the next day to get our swab done and wanted to get a bit familiar with the place. Also, this was the last two days of the veg festival, and we wanted to see if we could find a street vendor with the “veggie” flag on their cart! (Sad spoiler alert: we never found one).

So we wandered up the beach and up Bangla Road, which is the famous party road in Patong. And is it ever! While there wasn’t much open (bars don’t open till the weekend, and there still weren’t a whole pile of tourists) the street was *nothing* but bars and massage parlours! Of course, I had to take a pic of this one, being a Newfie:

Not that it’s a Newfie bar: we’ve seen German and Swiss and Australian bars and an Irish pub, but no Newfie ones! But Blackhorse is a Newfie beer brand.

And on we wandered, to the Jungceylon. It’s an utterly massive mall; apparently, it has a few cinemas and a bowling alley and much more, but we wouldn’t know because pretty much all of it is closed because of Covid. The Big C extra, however, was open, and I am so incredibly happy we went!

The Big C Extra is a big grocery store with an upper floor of clothes and household supplies. Why were we so excited? Because, it being the week of the Vegetarian Festival, they had ALL THE VEGGIE FOOD MARKED IN BINS with flags and stickers! So we took photos of them all, so we could identify and find them later, and there is SO MUCH AVAILABLE! Veg food and so many faux meats! Lots of explanation points there, but we were both really excited.

We’re vegan, so a find like this is a big thing for us 🙂 Thai food tends to have lots of fish and seafood added; even the pretzels and potato chips may have seafood additives! 

Also, we bought some snacks, of course 😉

On the walk home we looked at all the street vendors, mostly clothes but some souvenirs, etc. The clothes are so cute and so darn cheap! You can easily buy very lightweight shirts and dresses for $6 without bickering (I don’t really feel you should bicker much now, with Covid…these are very tough economic times for Thailand). Wayne bought a ball cap.

We had lunch at a small restaurant (a veg stir fry – no fish/oyster sauce – with rice) where I discovered coconut water! Call me a tourist.

We found a little spot selling Mango Sticky Rice, which is awesome! It’s sliced fresh mango and sticky (aka glutinous) rice with coconut milk/cream on it. It may not sound like much, but it’s a melt-in-your-mouth sweet concoction you have to try; we’re definitely going to make it when we return to Ontario next summer!

We walked the rest of the way home along the beach.

The next day was our swab test! We called a Grab taxi and went to get swabbed. Mine was horrible! That deep dive way back past where you think the swab can possibly go, and it stung and made my eyes water; at least they only did one nostril! Wayne got off easy with a shallowish swab.

After that, we ran into the Big C for some snacks and a clothes hanger (for when we hand wash our smaller clothes).

On the way home, looked for street vendors with the veg flag (since it was the last day of the veg festival) but no luck. So we stopped at a tiny outdoor restaurant with loads of locals and had a food fail…we *tried* to request a pad thai with no fish/oyster sauce or egg. Came with a little spice pile with a tiny ant in it, and loads of egg. Oh, well. I did get another coconut, which was yummy.

The waitress also gave us a tiny bowl of something (?) which she delivered to every person, but we couldn’t see how they used it…we suspected it was a finger dip, but it had what looked to be green onion bits and definitely sesame oil in it! Being me, I dipped my finger and tasted it…definitely a disinfectant. Yuck. Drank water.

We walked home along the beach, dipped in the pool, went out to watch another amazing sunset, and that was that!

October 15 & 16 (last day at Diamond Cliff)

Not much happened on the day of the 15th; we did a bit more exploring of the area. The plants around here are so impressive!

That night, we took a video of a beautiful sunset.

As we walked by the lobby on the way home we heard some music that lured us in … a Thai lady in traditional garb was playing a Khim (see photo below). We sat and listened for a while; it was hauntingly beautiful. 

The next day was moving day. At our last dip in the pool, we met Khenchen Lama Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk who was visiting (teaching for a nearby monastery). He’s from the UK, and so funny! He’s not a swimmer, but we encouraged him to go down the slide:

His joy just made our morning!

What a wonderful end to a wonderful week! Although we were sad to leave Diamond Cliff, we were also excited to move to another area of Patong Beach.

I’ll try to post once a week to share beautiful Thailand with you all! Subscribe (box to the right) if you want us to let you know when new posts are up 🙂

Love to you all!