I keep returning to Thailand and it’s never really a hard decision. The food is reliably excellent wherever you land, the pace of a day never feels forced, and there’s a warmth to the service that I haven’t found in quite the same way anywhere else. This time I needed a proper retreat more than I needed a destination, and Phuket had the one practical thing that made the choice easy: a direct flight out of Kolkata. 

We checked into the InterContinental Kamala Beach, which turned out to be the entire reason for this trip, and it earns that billing. The property holds 2 Michelin Keys, and you feel why almost as soon as you arrive — the architecture leans fully into Thai design, temple-style roofs, a pavilion at the entrance that looks like it belongs to a sightseeing point rather than a hotel. One thing worth knowing before you go: the main resort sits up on a hillside and isn’t directly on the sand — you get down to Kamala Beach through an underground tunnel that connects the two. Nobody had mentioned that to us beforehand, and it took us a minute to work out where it led, but once you know it’s there it becomes part of the charm.

The resort runs 5 pools and 7 dining outlets. We’d booked through an AMEX offer that added a third night free on top of two paid ones, along with hotel credit, which made an already excellent stay feel like genuinely good value. Our room looked out over one of the pools with the sea visible just beyond it, and I spent more time than I’d like to admit just standing at the window in the first hour, doing nothing but taking that view in. If you’re weighing this hotel up, it’s worth a search of your own too — there’s more to the property than I managed to get through in three nights.

Lunch on the first day was light and Thai — som tam, a pomelo salad, a couple of Western options thrown in. Between that and dinner, we didn’t do much beyond exactly what a retreat is supposed to look like: a long stretch by the pool, drinks through happy hour, and a slow, walk around the property.

Dinner was Zuma at the Anantara Hotel, and I say this without exaggeration — this was my ninth visit to a Zuma somewhere in the world, so I know exactly what to expect from it by now, and it delivered again: the robata grill, padrón peppers, gomae, the fried rice, and the ZUMA chocolate desert which oozes caramel to close things out. What made the evening better than just a good meal, though, was a long conversation with the restaurant manager, who used to run the floor at Zuma Riyadh. We ended up trading notes on Zuma outlets across different cities for a good half hour — the kind of conversation that only happens when you love a restaurant too much, and he clearly did too.

We ended the night with a foot massage at PJ, 400 baht. You’ll find massage parlours on nearly every street corner, cheap, and genuinely skilled. You can have an excellent hour-long massage on a random street in Kamala for less than the price of a cocktail.

I was up at 5am the next day, which is a genuinely unpleasant hour on a holiday, but I’d wanted to fit in a day of diving and this was the only way to make it work. I hold my Advanced Open Water certification, and after an Americano to get myself functional, I was in a van heading down to Patong Harbour by myself while the rest of the group slept in.

I dived with All4Diving, who run a properly organised operation out of the harbour, and the day covered three sites — the King Cruiser Wreck, Koh Dok Mai, and Shark Point. My instructor for the day went by Gadget, and he was excellent throughout. The diving itself was genuinely good, if I’m honest without oversell it: solid marine life across all three sites, nothing pelagic  (no big schools, nothing sweeping past in open water) but a steady, satisfying amount to look at throughout each dive. The King Cruiser Wreck was the clear highlight, a large sunken vessel with enough structure intact that swimming through and around it felt like the day’s real payoff. It wasn’t the best dive of my life by any stretch, but it was a genuinely fun day out on the water. I did pick up a touch of barotrauma on my very first descent (sharp, uncomfortable pressure in one ear that I couldn’t quite equalise away) and it stayed with me for a few days. 

Back at the hotel, I reached late and after freshening up we had pre-dinner cocktails at Sipping Tiger Bar, the hotel’s jungle-themed lounge tucked just off the lobby, all soft lighting, dense greenery, and 1940s glamour that makes it feel like you’ve wandered into a private hideout. Dinner that night was at Say Cheese, and it turned out to be the single best find of the entire trip — a proper French and Swiss spread of fondue and raclette, with a lovely amuse-bouche to open things. The service matched the food step for step, warm and attentive without ever hovering, and the whole place had an amazing ambience. 

We spent the next morning at Central Phuket, which is actually two connected malls rather than one — Central Festival, the older and more everyday half, and Central Floresta, the newer luxury wing next door, joined by a glass sky bridge so you never have to step back out into the heat. We spent a good couple of hours drifting between floors before settling in for lunch.

Lunch was at Thai Brasserie by Blue Elephant.  It’s the more casual, mall-friendly offshoot of the original Blue Elephant, the fine-dining Thai institution twenty minutes off. We ordered pad thai, spring rolls, a green curry, and a tom kha that ended up being the clear standout. 

In the afternoon we went to the pool as well as the beach, and by evening we’d made our way to Pine Beach Bar, which is the hotel restaurant on the beach. We ordered a Caesar salad, a plate of aglio e olio, and tiramisu to finish, but the food was really just the backdrop to the setting — the sun dropping slowly over the Andaman, and a fire show that kicked off just as the sky properly turned colour, the performers working flaming poi against the darkening water behind them. 

Later that evening, at Pure Serenity, I had a body massage followed by a facial at 1,500 and the facial in particular stood out, easily one of the best I’ve had anywhere, thorough and clearly done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Breakfast on the final morning was a proper spread, though the property runs it in two distinct ways worth knowing about if you’re staying there — the buffet sits up on the hillside, in the main part of the resort, while the à la carte breakfast is served down on the beach side and is reserved for guests with lounge access. We had the latter, and I went with congee and eggs Benedict, a good, unhurried way to close out the trip before heading to the airport.

Phuket wasn’t a trip built around ticking off sights or racing through an itinerary. It was exactly the retreat I’d gone looking for — good food, warm service, diving, and long enough stretches of doing absolutely nothing that it actually felt like rest by the time we left. Sometimes that’s all a trip needs to be.