Blue Beach Club & Resort

We enjoyed our stay at the Blue Ocean Resort. Having now stayed there, I can understand how reviews are so mixed. Let me start by saying that this isn’t really the place I would stay if I was traveling with young kids. The hotel itself is fine for kids, but it’s location is right in the middle of a very busy section of the city. It’s total chaos outside. I definitely would never call this place a resort, my guess is they’re technically allowed to call it that because there is a restaurant on site and has a pool, but that’s where the resort part ends. Pros: The beds were comfortable and they had both hard and softer pillows so we actually slept alright. But you’ve got to be on the side that faces north if you want to sleep, because the road noise with all the scooters and Tuk Tuks with blasting bass and music will keep you up, otherwise. The breakfast was actually pretty good. Not a ton of variety, but there’s an egg/omelette station where you can request what you want, and then a row of hot meal stuff, mostly non-breakfast items like fried rice or curry, but also with some hot dogs (that they call sausages), and pancakes/French toast. There was a little bit of fresh fruit as well, mostly just pineapple, papaya, and watermelon. The beach is just down the street, maybe a 5 min walk at most. It’s just the right distance from the beach. Not too close so you don’t get all the noise from everything happening there, and close enough to just walk. There’s and open food market in the opposite direction of the beach that was amazing! We ate there every night and were able to try all kinds of delicious Thai dishes and desserts. There’s a little scooter rental place just across the street that we loved! I’d heard many horror stories of scooter rental places blaming you for scratches or damage to the scooters that you didn’t do, and hold your passport hostage until you pay them, but we had zero problems with the place across the street. It’s 200-400 baht a day for 24 hours, and both times we rented a scooter we had no problems. There’s a cool suit place just outside the hotel entrance that was great if you’re looking for a suit. Sunny, the owner, is from India, so speaks better English than anyone else we met while in Phuket. Cons: The first night we were in room 285, which is on the bottom floor facing the road. It was sooo bad, we hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours with traveling and the noise was so loud that we couldn’t sleep. My wife was up crying all night because she was so tired and the noise prevented her from sleeping, even with ear plugs, and a pillow over her head. They moved us to room 601 for the next few nights which was a totally different experience, quiet and much better. If you get 285, or any of the rooms in that wing, stop them before they give you the room and demand something on the 6th/7th floor. The hot water sometimes came out luke warm and yellow. They claimed it was “maintenance” with the pipes, but I’m pretty sure that’s the norm when they run out of hot water, since it happened on different days and we asked different people each time. Most of the time the water was clear and hot and exactly what I would expect, but just consider yourself warned on that. The language barrier was a real thing. No one spoke anything but very broken English at the front desk, so communication was really difficult. That seems to be the norm in Thailand in my limited experience. The hair dryer would work for about 30-60 seconds and then automatically shut off. You’d have to wait about 5 minutes for it to cool down before it would turn on again and do the same thing. We had someone come take a look and they couldn’t understand why we thought it was a problem. So we just gave up and my wife just didn’t use it. “Fitness Center”. I was really frustrated about this. There is NOT a fitness center at this hotel! They crammed a few old machines and a hodge podge of small free weights into the lobby of the 4th floor by the elevators, and call it a “fitness center”. It’s like 85° in that lobby area, so even if there was actual decent machines/free weights, it would be too hot and miserable to work out. One of my main search criteria when booking hotels was that I wanted a place to exercise. There we no treadmills, and two old elliptical. Basically, they threw some old crap in a corner and stuck a “fitness center” label on it. Totally dishonest in my opinion.