Bang Tao Beach

Bang Tao is six kilometres long, which changes what the word beach means. The southern end has beach clubs and day beds; the middle has resorts set behind the treeline; the northern end has almost nobody on it. A hotel described as “on Bang Tao” could be in any of those three places and they are not the same holiday.

It is also the widest sand on the island, which is what people remember about it.

Where it sits on the gradient

Bang Tao has a grid cell to itself, which is unusual on this coast: 0.40m in February and 1.21m in July. That is calmer than everything to the south of it and slightly rougher than Nai Yang and Mai Khao to the north, placing it in the middle of the sheltered half.

The practical version of that is a beach you can generally swim at into the shoulder months, when Kata and Nai Harn are under flags, without going as far north as the national park beaches.

What it is for

Resort stays. This is where Phuket put its large hotels, and the model is that you arrive, you stay, and the resort provides. If that is the trip, Bang Tao is very good at it. If you want to walk out and choose between twenty restaurants, it is the wrong beach: the strip is thin and the distances are long.

The northern end rewards a walk. It thins out quickly and after twenty minutes there is very little except sand.

Getting here

About twenty minutes from the airport, the shortest transfer of any of the main west-coast beaches, which makes Bang Tao a common first or last night as well as a whole holiday.

Gallery

Bang Tao Beach in pictures

The rest of the coast

Every beach on this page is measured the same way, on the same scale, in Phuket’s beaches, ranked by what they are for. The month behind those figures is on the Phuket weather page, and where to base yourself is area by area.