Banana Beach

Banana Beach is a short cove between Bang Tao and Nai Thon on the northwest coast: soft sand, clear water, and a rocky headland at each end. For years it was the beach you found by spotting a gap in the fence on the coast road.

That version is gone. Late in 2025 the old path down through the trees was closed and a car park opened at the north end of the beach, with a beach club beside it. The cove is the same; how you arrive and who else is there are not.

Getting there now

The car park entrance is on the right on the road from Nai Thon, before Trisara, and from the car park you are on the sand in about a minute. There is a parking charge and a toilet and shower block near it. The old roadside entrance further south, and the steep path down from it, are blocked off with signs (Phuket 101, 2026 update).

Most guides still describe the walk down. If yours does, it was written before the change.

Which end

The north end is where the car park and the beach club are, with rows of loungers and music, and where the tour groups that the car park now brings spend their time.

The south end is the beach people used to mean. A small local restaurant sits back from the sand, the rocks at that end are good for snorkelling, and it is a few minutes’ walk from the club and much quieter.

Gallery

Banana Beach in pictures

What the sea does here

Banana Beach faces west into the Andaman, on the northern half of Phuket’s west coast, which is the calmer half. Four years of marine reanalysis put this stretch at 0.39 metres in January, its calmest month, and 1.21 metres in July, its roughest, as the mean of each day’s highest wave. It is under 0.6 metres in 6 months of the year.

It is calmer than Kata in every month of the year: 0.40 metres against 0.61 in February, 1.21 against 1.34 in July. That is the coast's gradient, calmer as you go north, and a cove with headlands either side sits on the sheltered end of it.

One limit, said plainly. The marine grid is about five kilometres across, and Banana Beach falls in the same cell as Bang Tao. The two carry identical figures by construction. The headlands that enclose the cove are not in the model, and on a calm day they can make the water inside it calmer than the number.

From May to September it is still the open Andaman in the southwest monsoon. Swim where you can stand and stay out under red flags, here as anywhere on this coast.

Staying nearby

Nobody stays on Banana Beach; it is a day out. The nearest bases are Bang Tao, a few minutes south, with the island’s big resorts, and Nai Thon to the north, which is small and quiet. Both are among the closest beaches to the airport.

Every beach on the island is measured on the same scale in Phuket’s beaches, ranked by what they are for, and where to base yourself is area by area.