A fresh face

Even the view from the Cape Spa is soothing. The spa, at the Cape Panwa Hotel, has beautiful sea vistas.

As I’m approaching and entering the Cape Spa I think to myself that it looks more like an expensive, elegant villa than a spa. There is a mix of traditional Thai and modern design, high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows and stunning views of the bay.

Though the spa opened earlier this year, the hotel it’s located in – Cape Panwa Hotel – has been a Phuket standard for 20 years.

Spa Manager Wanphen Daloonpate certainly has the credentials to set up the spa; she has experience from 16 spas over the past six years and in many of those locations she was the pre-opening manager and helped to design the spas and menus, train staff and get the spa off the ground.

She said the response she has received about Cape Spa thus far has been positive, especially about the design. She says the guests love walking around the building and admiring the style and color tones. They say it makes them feel at home.

The large spa building has two levels providing four therapy rooms, three Thai massage rooms and a foot massage room.
“We have a lot of returning guests, some come every day during their stay. It is part of the trend toward healthy living and taking good care or yourself,” K. Wanphen says.

Some 90% of the guests at the spa are from the Cape Panwa Hotel; the others are from hotels in the area. Another interesting trend, she says, is that most guests come for treatment as couples.

The most popular therapy is the Full Moon Anti-Stress treatment that takes 70 minutes and costs 1,000 baht, plus tax and service (++). It includes a foot scrub and head, shoulder and back massage that ends with a warm herbal compress.

“Another favorite of the guests is the Aroma Foot Soak, which is a part of every therapy treatment. Treatments start with 10 minutes of soaking and scrubbing their feet under a large bath tap,” K. Wanphen says.

Services at the spa include massages, body scrubs, facials, warm milk baths and mud treatments. Packages that mix and match run from 70 to 300 minutes and 700 to 7,500 baht++, respectively.

The spa menu is quite large in size and printed in big font, so it is easy to shop for the experience I want, and the reception area has oils set out so I can sample their fragrances.

I choose the Sensitive Facial (70 minutes, 2,000 baht++) and head off with therapist Duangjai Tantiroj to the treatment room, where we begin with the signature Aroma Foot Soak. She first cleans my feet with salt, then a scrub and finally applies a gel with orange fragrance.

The soft music playing in the spa lulls me into relaxation as K. Duangjai starts the facial with multiple steps of cleansing, scrubbing, massaging and applications of toning gel and moisturizers.

When an hour has passed the masseuse massages my arms and legs to bring me back to earth. K. Wanphen tells me to not use makeup for 12 hours to let the moisturizer penetrate the skin.

Wow! I feel so comfortable and my face is so soft…if I had more time than this and I wasn’t worried about all the work back at the office.

The Cape Spa’s hours are 10 am to 9 pm daily, for reservations please call 076-391123, ext 204. The spa is located at the Cape Panwa Hotel, Sakdidet Rd on Cape Panwa.

At just 35 baht, the weightwatcher’s salad is both delicious and delightfully presented

MR eaders of the Gazette by now might have noticed that not many restaurants serving “farang” food have been featured in this column.

The truth is that most restaurants that do farang food well simply don’t qualify, as we use a 100-baht per dish maximum as our rule-of-thumb on what qualifies as a “cheap eat”.

Of course, in the under-100-baht price range there are many restaurants in Phuket serving sickeningly sweet spaghetti, baked goods with the texture of pillow stuffing or pizza served with ketchup as a necessary condiment. The truth is that while Thais do Thai food well, they tend to struggle with Western fare – at least in this price range.

That’s why P Pizza House on Yaowarat Rd in Samkong, Phuket City, is a real find, because it offers the quality of food one might expect from a restaurant in a four- or five-star hotel, but at prices just about everyone can afford – even a journalist.

Opened in early April this year and still with just two staff – Amporn “Porn” Krasang and his wife Phakaphan – P Pizza House is very much a family-run business. K. Porn has 14 years’ experience in the food and beverage industry in Phuket, having worked at The Metropole, Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club, Patong Merlin and the Sheraton Grande Laguna, where he was a Chef de Partie.

K. Porn’s hotel experience shows in every phase, from the design and spacing of the restaurant’s eight tables and the attractive dishes and sturdy cutlery, right down to the food itself.

the pizza in light and the crust is thin and crispy.

Most restaurants in this price range don’t even have an English-language menu, but the one here is not only easy to read, but accurately translated – so you can ponder over a wide variety of mouthwatering choices that don’t include the funny yet nausea-inducing options – such as “paper steak” or “deep fried crap roll” – that defile so many menus in Phuket.

The most expensive items on the menu, at 100 baht, are grilled salmon steak and sirloin steak. Thai staples such as fried rice and raad na are just 25 baht, no more than at a sidewalk stall. This is a real bargain when you consider that the dining area is airy and comfortable, despite being right on a congested stretch of Yaowarat Rd near Samkong Shrine, a center of activity for the annual Vegetarian Festival.

To start up his restaurant, K. Amporn invested in a new 30,000-baht pizza oven. There are about 10 pizza options, starting at just 40 baht for a plain 10-inch tomato and cheese pizza. There are no ridiculous Thai hybrids such as tom yum gung or green curry pizzas on the menu.

Vegetable toppings are five baht each, while meats and seafood are 10 baht. I am pretty careful about ordering pizza in this country, so I decided to build my own with onions, a mix of green, red and yellow capsicum, sausage, salami, a black olives and mushrooms. A total of 85 baht.

I also ordered a “weightwatcher salad” at 35 baht, wondering with trepidation what to expect – as Western-style salads served by small Thai restaurants are all too often a letdown.

I was pleasantly surprised with the salad, which contained fresh iceberg lettuce, small cherry tomatoes, sliced grapes and cubes of pineapple and apple. Everything was fresh; the whole salad was sprinkled with minutely diced capsicum and garnished with thee fresh slices of orange.

The dressing was a tangy mix of salad oil, red and balsamic vinegar and fine-chopped onions.

Refreshing and light, it was the perfect appetizer and left me wondering: with such an abundance and variety of fruit in this country, why is it so hard to find good, cheap fruit salads?

All pizza pies at P Pizza are of the thin-crust variety, though not so crispy that they break apart at first bite. The pizza itself had just the right amount of tomato sauce and cheese to let the toppings stand out, and these were all fresh and evenly distributed across the surface.

Notably, the tomato sauce was not too sweet, and the cheese was not that glutinous industrial goo you see on too many by-the-slice pizzas available at shopping malls on the island.

Perhaps the only letdown of my meal was the fact that I could only look longingly at the small cans of Heineken (35 baht) lined up behind the frost in the large glass door refrigerator, each seeming to call out “Why have you forsaken me?”

Sadly it was lunchtime; I try to hold off until the sun goes down before hitting the cool ones.

Asked about the name of the restaurant, K. Porn explained it was chosen because he, his wife and their young son all have names with the letter “P” in them. Reasonable enough.

Things I would like to try on future visits include the grilled saba fish (70 baht), pork chops (70 baht) and sea bass fillet “meuniere” (70 baht). That next visit will likely come soon, as this restaurant is walking distance from my house and is an excellent vantage point for one of my favorite leisure activities – watching traffic pass while drinking beer with like-minded friends.

P Pizza House. 300/2 Yaowarat Rd, Samkong, on the inbound side near Samkong Chinese Shrine. Open daily 11 am to 10 pm. No delivery available, but orders can be called in at 076-217460 or 089-5864569.

Andy Penders, of ESPN Star Sports Football Crazy fame, and family.

Legendary Australian music promoter Michael Chugg, better known as “Chuggie”, raised the bar for private parties on the island on June 16 with his 60th birthday bash at Sai Taan in Cherng Talay.

Most likely to be remembered as the party of the year, the event saw live on-stage performances by Leo Sayer and Brian Cadd.

With peroxide blond hair, husky voice, slinky silver gown – it must be MM… Molly Meldrum, that is.

Projected on a large screen by the stage were birthday wishes from Australian and international celebrities, including legendary Aussie actors Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson, with the first to wish Chuggie happy birthday being Australian classic rock icon Richard Clapton.

Guests were greeted by Laguna’s resident baby elephant Lilly, and the party started in earnest after moving speeches by his children Lucas, Sophie and Nicholas.

Fellow Aussie music icon Molly Meldrum literally graced the stage, in costume as more of a Molly Monroe… or possibly a Marilyn Meldrum.

Sons Nicholas, left, and Lucas join Chuggie onstage.

For non-Australians on the island, Chuggie is a living legend in the Australian music industry – not just for his achievements in music and entertainment promotion, but also for his work in raising funds for children’s charities.

In true Chuggie style, each guest was charged 1,000 baht a head with money going to the Life Home Project, the Phuket Has Ben Good to Us foundation and Asia Center Foundation.

Chuggie enjoys the jokes, mostly directed at him.

Chuggie was also recipient of the Ted Albert Award For Outstanding Services To Australian Music at the APRAs in June 2005. The award reads:

“With over 40 years experience, Michael Chugg is one of the most prominent, respected and colourful promoters within Australian music and around the world.

Leo Sayer gets some help with a song.

“Considered to be a pioneer of the Australian music industry, he has been responsible for organising and promoting tours and events by such an huge array of international artists that it would be impossible to list them all.

“And his fundraising efforts have been nothing short of legendary.”

An impressive fireworks display concluded the party with enough gusto to match Chuggie’s larger-than-life style.