Phuket Travel Guide

Phuket is an island about fifty kilometres from top to bottom, connected to the mainland by a bridge and served by its own international airport. That scale is the thing most first-time visitors underestimate. Phuket is not a resort town you can walk across; it is a place where the choice of beach decides how the whole trip feels, because moving between them means a taxi or a hired scooter.

West coast, east coast

The beaches are on the west side, facing the Andaman Sea, and they run from busy to quiet as you move away from the middle. Patong is the centre of gravity for nightlife and the widest choice of hotels. South of it, Karon and Kata are calmer and better for families. North, Bang Tao and the Laguna estate hold most of the upmarket resorts, with Kamala and Surin between them.

The east side is different in kind. Phuket Town has no beach at all, and instead holds the island’s best food, its Sino-Portuguese shophouse architecture and its lowest room rates. Most boats to Phi Phi and the eastern islands leave from the piers on this side. Our guide to where to stay in Phuket compares the four main bases with live rates.

What the island is for

Beaches first, and then the water. Phuket is the main departure point for the Andaman: day trips to Phi Phi, the Hong Islands, James Bond Island in Phang Nga Bay, and liveaboard diving out to the Similans in season. On land there is the Big Buddha, the old town, a handful of viewpoints on the southern cape, and more elephant sanctuaries and cooking schools than any other island in the country.

Season matters more here than almost anywhere

November to April is the dry high season, with calm seas and reliable sun. December and January are the busiest and most expensive weeks of the year.

May to October is the southwest monsoon. The west coast faces directly into it, so expect rough seas, frequent red flags on the beaches and stretches of heavy rain, alongside the lowest prices and a much emptier island. Drownings in the surf are a genuine problem in these months and the flags are not decorative. Some island day trips stop running entirely when the sea is up. See when to visit Thailand for how this compares with the Gulf coast, which runs on the opposite calendar.

Getting around, and what it costs

This is the part worth planning. Phuket does have a bus between the west-coast beaches, and it is worth knowing about before you write the island off as taxi-only: the Smart Bus runs the airport to Rawai via Cherng Talay, Surin, Kamala, Patong, Karon and Kata for 100 baht end to end. What it is not is flexible. It keeps a fixed route on a fixed timetable, it does not reach Nai Yang, Mai Khao or Nai Harn, and away from that one line metered taxis are scarce and fares are high by Thai standards whether negotiated or set by app. Renting a scooter is far cheaper and is what many visitors do, though the island’s road accident rate is high and it is not a casual decision. The practical answer for a short trip is to pick an area where you can walk to dinner, which is why Patong, Kata and Karon suit shorter stays.

Where Phuket actually is

Phuket sits off Thailand’s Andaman coast at about eight degrees north, roughly 850 kilometres south of Bangkok and joined to the mainland by the Sarasin bridge at its northern tip. It is Thailand’s largest island at about 540 square kilometres, which makes it larger than Singapore and about the size of the Isle of Wight and a half.

That position explains the two things that decide a trip here. It is on the west side of the peninsula, so it takes the southwest monsoon from May to October while the Gulf islands on the other side are in their dry season. And it has its own international airport, which is why it is the easiest beach in Thailand to reach and the natural first or last stop on a trip.

Where it sits in relation to everywhere else, with the real journey times.

The beaches are not interchangeable

Almost every beach worth the name is on the west coast, and they run from Nai Harn at the southern tip to Mai Khao in the north. They look identical in photographs because the sand genuinely is the same. What differs is the noise behind them, whether you can walk to dinner, and the sea.

On that last one there is a gradient nobody writes about: the west coast gets steadily calmer from south to north, by about forty per cent between Kata at one end and Mai Khao at the other, and in the same order in every month of the year.

All nine beaches, and which is for what

Beyond the sand

The part most visitors miss is the old town: Sino-Portuguese shophouses built on nineteenth-century tin money along Thalang and Dibuk roads, and the best eating on the island. Add the Big Buddha on the central ridge for the view across both coasts at once, and a boat day into Phang Nga bay for the limestone that Phuket itself does not have, and you have a complete week.

What is worth the taxi fare, and what is not

How long to give it

Four or five nights is enough for a couple of beach days and one or two boat trips without feeling rushed. A week lets you add the old town, a second island day and some slower time. Many trips pair Phuket with Krabi or Khao Lak, which are both reachable by road or ferry.

For the wider coast, see the Andaman Coast, or browse tours and tickets across the island and its day trips.