We've hit a snag booking our trip for next january. Our preferred route is bangkok, chiang mai and ko samui with a few interesting detours thrown in for fun. However, this time we are using our Tesco vouchers, and our usual haunts via Tradewinds and Premier holidays are no longer in the Tesco scheme, so it's Virgin or nothing!

We chose the Taste of Adventure tour, which uses the BelAire princess in Bkk, Karon Beach Resort in Phuket, elephant hills camp and Krabi thai village. we will also be adding royal princess in CM, one of our favourites. These all looked okay, but Virgin now tell us that karon beach resort is not available and we have yet to hear about krabi thai village. It does seem a bit crazy to offer a tour where 2 of 4 hotels are not available. Our other choices in phuket seem to be merlin beach resort and diamond cliff resort.

Can anyone offer any advice about either of these? Our other option could be to try and get some unbooked nights with virgin and book the karon beach resort ourselves, but I don't know if Virgin will accept that within the voucher scheme (and we have a lot of vouchers).

This will be our first time in a sort-of organised way, but it sounded okay. Now, however, with different hotels, I'm not so sure. How i miss tradewinds...

Sue
I have stayed at the Merlin Beach Resort and it's a nice hotel with lovely pools... the small beach is unswimable due to too much coral. However, it is isolated (you may like that) and a 10 minute tut tut ride to get into Patong or elsewhere if you choose to eat out of the hotel. There was only one restaurant nearby but was destroyed by the Tsunami and I'm unsure if it's been rebuilt.
Check out tripadvisor and asiarooms for hotel reviews to help you decide.
Good luck spending your vouchers.
Cheers Geri

Thanks Geri. We usually try for something a bit more central to so we can more easily do different things if need be. We stayed in Central Karon Hotel a few years ago- our only other stay in phuket and loved the hotel but disliked the constant need for tuk tuk travel. Sounds like these options may be similar in that regard. In samui we like the baan samui.

We are leaning towards the merlin beach resort; it looks like we may need to upgrade to a deluxe from superior room- are these any good? so far the Virgin programme seems to be a series of advertising things that aren't available.

never mind, once we get there all will be well; we have yet to be unhappy anywhere in thailand.

Sue
If you want to be nearer the action you might like to enquire if Merlin Beach's sister property 'Patong Merlin' is part of your voucher scheme. Patong Merlin is not as new but it's a great favourite with the Aussie's (if you can put up with them ) Lots of people I know love it.
We had a deluxe room at Merlin Beach and they are very nice and no complaints... however, we were given the option to upgrade to a direct pool access room for our second week and took it. Direct pool access rooms are slightly smaller than the deluxe and you are facing other rooms and no air... the deluxe are better.
Have you been to Kata Beach? We stayed at Kata Beach Hotel last October and found it ok... lots of Europeans, Russians, Germans, and a smattering of Aussie's and Kiwi's. We got a great deal with asiarooms and no problems.
Our favourite hotel is the Busakorn Wing of the Holiday Inn in Patong... it's like an oasis in the middle of madness, unless you stepped outside you would know a thing.
What are Tesco vouchers?
Cheers Geri

come quarterly on your clubcard account- for every pound you spend in Tescos you get a point. If you get a Tesco Visa card, then you get another 1/2 point for every pound on the card. 100 points = £1. We run everything through this visa card, and presto- lotsa clubcard points! We even bought a car using the card last year and had mega points. The trick is to make sure you pay the bill in full each month to keep it interest free.

Vouchers can be traded in for 'clubcard deals' £4 of deal for each £1 of voucher, so..... there you are. Each £100 of clubcard vouchers = £400 off a holiday (with virgin, in this case). We've been twice so far to thailand with 'deals' and are working on our third.

Glad to hear about the merlin beach deluxe rooms, we have just been offered them as being available, so will try and get them while we can. That hotel seems to get a lot of positive comments, while the diamond cliff has a mixed press. I'm still not convinced about staying in such a large place. Thanks for your report.