Hotel Review: Sheraton Samoa Beach Resort.

When researching Samoa I found it a tricky place to find a decent hotel with all the mod-cons. It’s still a relatively unheard of place to holiday, and aside from the many Australians and New Zealanders we bumped into around the island, we didn’t really see too many other tourists from Europe – if any at all. After having such a great experience at the Sheraton Melbourne Hotel last year, I decided to give another Sheraton a try, and I am so glad I did! The Samoan resort is a tropical paradise, with a private lagoon beach, peaceful swimming pool, and the most incredible Samoan Oka! And, fire dancers.

 

But the fire dancers story is a story for the end of this review. What I will be telling you about first, is how much we enjoyed the Sheraton Samoa Beach Resort. We arrived early evening from Fiji just as the sun was dipping towards the horizon, and after checking out the contemporary design of the HUGE room, we flung our bags down before racing outside to have a cocktail by the pool. We suddenly panicked and realised we forgot to apply mosquito spray, but then realised that actually, we weren’t being bitten and there weren’t really any mosquitoes around!

 

Anywho, there’s a swim-up beach bar that serve the strongest Pina Colada’s I have ever had (and yes, we sang the song continuously), and after sipping a couple of cocktails we decided to go and get ready for dinner. The South Pacific restaurant is reasonably priced and has an incredible selection of fresh local seafood as well as meat and veggie options. Laura isn’t a huge seafood lover, so I spent the week eating seafood (it’s literally my favourite) and she tried the meat and veggie options for me.

 

We got an early night and arose the next morning after a restful sleep in Sheraton’s super comfy beds, ready to explore Samoa! Luckily the resort has a car rental business within the resort, so we popped in before breakfast and booked the car for that day. Breakfast is held each morning within the resort’s Fale (a traditional Samoan structure pronounced ‘Fal-ay’), and includes a delicious selection of cereals, fresh fruit, fresh eggs and omelettes, pastries, and typical booked breakfast items. It was a good job the breakfast selection was so vast, because we ended up skipping lunch (but more on this in my next post).

After our day driving around the island we wanted a night out in Samoa to do some *ahem* bar-hopping research for my blog post. And so we enlisted the help of all three members of the guest services team on the front desk, and got their opinions on the best bars. We then cross-referenced this with Google, and were please to see they matched up! So they booked a taxi for us while we went back to our room to get changed. Although Samoa is generally a very safe place to travel, the hotel staff advised us to book a taxi through them because it costs the same and then if anything did happen and for whatever reason we didn’t return to the hotel, they knew exactly who the driver was.

Thankfully all was fine, and the driver was literally the loveliest guy ever! He drove us to the Marina in Apia and waited there for us while we partied the night away. We then met him where we’d left him at 1am and he drove us the hour back to the resort.

 

The next day we dragged ourselves from our marshmallow beds and shoved on our sunglasses for the walk over to the spa. In a deliriously hungover state we somehow got lost in the sprawling resort, but eventually found it and had a blissful hour of being massaged in the beautiful open-air spa.

Thankfully we were having a lazy beach day at the hotel the rest of the day, and our day involved sitting in the swimming pool giggling about the previous night, sipping on more Pina Colada’s (and singing the song again), eating the delicious Samoan Oka, and then laying in the shallows of the lagoon beach while the waves lapped gently around us.

 

It was bliss.

The entire resort is just beautiful and was so perfect for what we needed. And then there was the event we will never forget. The Fia Fia Cultural Show. The buffet was stocked with local specialties and we were happily diving into our delicious meal in the company of the lovely PR lady of the hotel when the Fia Fia performers came on stage and my mouth dropped open.

 

Laura nudged me, “Catherine…isn’t that the guy you were kissing last night?”, “Erm…yes”. There he was, the guy from the bar the previous night, dancing on the stage in a traditional Samoan outfit (aka, not wearing a lot). Laura nudged me again, “If he recognises you, are you gonna let him kiss you again?”, my mouth was still hanging open, and I shot back “Are you looking at the same body I am? Of course I am!”. I’ve been blogging for 7 years and have always prided myself on being super professional…but this was the one exception to the rule.

And then the dancers had to go into the audience to choose guests to go on stage and dance with them. And he walked straight up to me, a huge grin on his face, and held out his hand and asked me to dance. So there we were, up on stage, him trying to teach me how to dance a traditional Samoan dance, when the night before he’d seen me dance on a pole in a nightclub and shake my booty to Beyonce. SO CLASSY CATHERINE. Thankfully Laura was also up on stage with me because one of the other dancers recognised her from the night before, so the two of us were feeling pretty awkward together.

 

When it was time for the fire dancing outside, I realised very quickly that the guy hadn’t just been using a bad pick-up line the night before, and he was actually a LEGIT fire dancer. Like, one who is REALLY good. Like, the actual main act. It was impressive stuff and I’m not ashamed to say I was pretty mesmerised. After the show he walked up to me grinning and flung his arms around me in a tight sweaty hug, and asked if I remembered him. Erm, duh. As if I was going to forget a guy who told me he was a fire dancer as an actual job – it’s possibly the coolest job ever.

I definitely let him kiss me again. The other guests were probably wondering what on earth was going on.

I know this was supposed to be a review of a hotel and it ended up being a review of a fire dancer, but the story was just too good not to tell. It still makes me laugh even now when I think about it! SO, if you go to Samoa, stay at the Sheraton Beach Resort and go to the Fia Fia night. We did get a photo together, but it clearly shows his face and I’d rather protect (some) of his privacy, so here’s a photo that sort-of covers his face, that I found on my phone the morning after our night out instead…

And to all the PR’s out there, I promise I won’t accidentally manage to find the hotel’s resident fire dancer in a bar located an hour away from the hotel again. I mean, what were the chances!?