How The Ultra- Rich Do Phuket, Thailand
This, my friends is what you call the epitome of luxury. A private resort with 10 suites, all for you and your friends/family to enjoy. The Villa is on an island, called Ko Yao Noi, off the coast of Phuket. You fly into the Phuket airport, are greeted at baggage claim (I made our entire group pack carryons for our 10 day trip, b/c they include free daily laundry service!!), and are escorted to luxury mini vans. From the airport, you take a 20 minute car ride to get to the dock, where we were met with this boat below, and took a 45 minute boat ride to Ko Yao Noi, then another 10 minute drive to the Villa in these open air pick up truck type vehicles.
Once you arrive, you are greeted by their most gracious staff at the entrance to the property. During our stay, the staff went above and beyond for us, and made all our requests come true. With the open bar, we were definitely keeping them busy :)
Besides the gorgeous scenery, (which I will come back to later), there were two highlights about Ani Villas:
1. THE FOOD WAS INSANE. The entire dining experience at Ani was soooo good. We ate all of our meals family style, at whatever time we collectively agreed on in the morning. Breakfast was an epic buffet spread in their little kitchen area, but everything else we ate outside. I mean, imagine eating most of your meals here and having spreads like this:
2. There were NO RULES. We could play our music as loud as we wanted, after hours you could go behind the bar and make yourself a drink, you could yell and and scream and laugh as loud as you wanted and there were no repercussions. If you wanted to get drunk, and annoy your wife, jump into the pool and eat chicken wings while in the pool, you could do that! Adam pictured below doing just that:
The beaches in Thailand were obviously a main attraction, and we had full intent to explore as many different ones as we could. We went out on a couple different excursions, and on one of them got to see the famous beach where they filmed the movie "The Beach". That beach is actually closed right now, to make sure that it is not ruined due to over use. We went to little sheltered areas, and got out and walked around in the water to explore. We snorkeled. Ani packed us box lunches for our boat rides so we ate well even on the boat (no surprise there). We were fueled by champagne and local beers, also packed by ani. A member of the staff came with us on our boat, and did everything to keep us comfortable (tidied up the boat from all our towels and mess, and kept the drinks flowing)... Pictured below is "the beach", the girls when we made a pitstop, and Adam his brothers and his cousin so happy to be together on the boat, and Adam and I on the way to Phi Phi islands (45 minute speed boat ride from Ani):
One of my favorite excursions we did was having a picnic lunch on an uninhabited island. We parked as close as we could and walked over to the island. The staff at Ani prepared us some awesome lunches, as well as a cooler full of libations. We went on the island to chill, eat lunch, and even fed some monkeys :) Check out Reggie's drone video from the island:
and this video of Reggie feeding the fish when we were snorkeling:
Overall, this was an amazing trip and we hope to one day come back and bring our kids so they can see and enjoy this amazing experience.