Phuket Bangtao Beach

Bangtao is a 6 km long sweeping crescent shaped bay with a gentle slope and absolutely pure white sand and it is fringed with rows of casuarina trees. At the middle Bang Tao offers the most luxurious resorts (Bayan Tree & Sheraton above all others) along its stretch of beach, and set around six picturesque lagoons. Nearby Villas are the uninhibited "No Tan Lines" Phuket Pavilions, or the Bundarika. The "Laguna area" is the best part of the very long Bang Tao with several restaurants on the beach. The laguna area is mostly very clean, unlike some other parts of the beach. With facilities including an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, spa, water park and one of Asia's biggest swimming pool.

The Dry season (Nov-May) is excellent for swimming. There are a wide range of activities - including a ropes course and rock climbing, windsurfing, elephant riding and kids' sports - is available for guests of Laguna's Sheraton Grande, Dusit Laguna, Laguna Beach, Allamanda and Banyan Tree Phuket resorts, and some are open to outside visitors as well. Play a round of golf at the Laguna Phuket course, practise your swing on the driving range nearby or go horseback riding along the beach. Afterwards, indulge in a massage and spa treatment at the world renowned Banyan Tree spa or at other retreats nearby.

Aside from the Laguna Phuket resorts, a variety of bungalows, resorts and villas are available for short- or long-term stays.

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Phuket Kamala beach

Kamala Beach is on the west coast of Phuket, just to the north of Patong, and immediately south of Surin Beach. Kamala provides a haven for those who prefer the quieter life. Although the southern end of the beach can get busy in the high season, the northern end is peaceful all year round. The Beach is quite nice and is not too crowded. Sea floor is nice and sandy. In the afternoons the water spectacularly recedes leaving a blanket of rocks at the left end of the beach for local fishing and a beautiful swimming area at the right end of the beach.

"Rim Haad" (Beach Road), at the southern end, has a number of small 20-30 room hotels for the low/medium budget traveler. Friendly service and village feel and a diversity of restaurants and small bars can be found on this small road. Cheaper food options/market stalls can be found on the main Kamala Road. If you are looking to spend most of the time on the beach enjoying the sea, this is a very good place to be.

The extremely popular Phuket Fantasea is located in Kamala. Fantasea is an exuberant "show-theme park" that combines the rich heritage of Thailand with unique 4D effects and animals. The park is 140 acres and presents a 4000-seat restaurant offering a grand buffet of Thai and international cuisine. The park operates daily except Thursdays and opens at 8.30 pm. If more entertainment is desired you can take a taxi to Patong beach; however taxi's are unreasonably expensive THB 500 one way (but less if you bargain). Tuk-tuks are a simple and (sometimes) cheap way to leave Kamala. Tuk-tuks to the more popular Patong cost around THB 300 . Some of the hotels provide an affordable shuttle to Patong.

Kamala offers some small supermarkets, one of them a 7/11. There's quite a few souvenir shops on the road, along with some tour offices where you can book lots of different tours for diving or beach watching . There are quite a few restaurants direct on the beach. Usually they show some fresh fish and seafood on ice, where you can choose exactly what to eat. There are several bars in Kamala - most designed to suit the tourists who flock to Phuket in the tourist season. For example the Welsh Bar and the Aussie Bar are bars that have a certain patriotic atmosphere but are rather quiet in the off season.

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Phuket Karon Beach

Much quieter and a little more secluded than Patong beach, Karon Beach is a simply heavenly stretch of white sand further south along the west coast of Phuket (South of Patong and North of Kata). Its clear, dazzling waters and lush hills make it one of the most idyllic beaches in Thailand. Karon Beach is approximately 1.5 km long. Here, not many hotels have direct beach frontage - most are across the road (which is not a busy one). The drive from Phuket International Airport is just under an hour.

The fastest way to get around Karon Beach is by Tuk-tuk, which are mostly needed to go to other parts of the beach or nearby towns. Bars, tailors and clothing markets are plentiful at Karon, either in the main part of town or along the beachfront. There are also a number of supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies; there's not much you need to travel elsewhere for. Karon has a variety of restaurants to choose from including a surprising number catering to Scandinavian tastes. Most restaurants are lined along the beach front road.

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Phuket Kata Beach

Kata beach is a broad and curving beach with soft white sand, an evergreen small island out in the bay named "Poo". and lush green hills in the background. The 1,4 km long beach is located in a protected bay with calm crystal clear water and is more child friendly than Karon and Kata Noi, where the water get deep fast. "Kata Noi" prolongs the Kata Beach to the south. The beach is bordered to the north by the Mon Tri's Boathouse resort, and most of the beachfront is occupied by the resort of Kata Thani. 

There are plenty of water activities along the beach like Hobie Cats, windsurfing, jet skies, parasailing, banana boats and so on. The annual Phuket Surfing Contest is taking place on this beach in September when the waves are large. In raining season or low season (May-Oct) the sea are often rough on the west coast, and great care should be taken. If the red flag is up, swimming should not take place!

One of the best shallow coral reefs on Phuket Island is to be found north of Club Med, around 70-80 meters off the beach stretching toward the small Poo island.
Visibility at the reef vary from 1 meter on a bad day to 15 meters on perfect days. If you are lucky you can spot a sea turtle swimming along the reef, definitely a highlight of any day. Avoid standing on rocks when snorkeling since it's easy to overlook a perfect camouflaged poison stonefish that can be found at Kata Reef.

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Phuket Nai Harn Beach

Nai Harn Beach is located at the southern end of Phuket in a beautiful and peaceful bay with the wind power station of Laem Promthep in the distance. Nai Harn is located in one of the most beautiful bays in Phuket and have a long stretch of sand with many small restaurants under the trees behind the beach. Nearest hotels to Nai Harn Beach are Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club & Suites, Sabana Resort and the newest "The Sands" (open April 2007), managed by Mangosteen Resort & Spa. The rocks along Le Royal Meridien is the best spot for snorkeling but much better snorkeling is to be found at nearby Ao Sane Beach. Be careful swimming in low season (May-October) when there are strong undertows, so do observe the warning flags.

Just north of Nai Harn, along the coast, is Nui Beach, small, secluded and difficult to access. Further along is Ya Nui, a sandy cove that attracts snorkelers and divers. Another out-of-the way spot nearby is the tiny beach of Ao Sane, a great spot for snorkeling, reached by taking the dirt road that starts at Le Royal Meridien's car park. Here up in the hill there is the Baan Krating Jungle Beach Resort. Ao Sand offers good water visibility together with nice corals close to the beach but it does not have white powder sand, unlike most other beaches on the west coast. Ao Sane it's not a beach crowded with tourists. The beach is almost empty with only a restaurant and a few bungalows. Maybe ten people on the beach and another ten in the restaurant.

Kata Beach, where you'll find a more lively nightlife, is about 20 minutes away, while Patong Beach is about a 30-minute drive.

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Phuket Panwa Peninsula

Panwa Peninsula is a peaceful, unspoiled gem in the deep south on Phuket Island, approximately 1.5 hours by car from the airport, with lovely white sand beaches. The southernmost tip of this cape is home to a Marine Biological Research Centre and Phuket's Aquarium where visitors may inspect several hundred exotic, grotesque, and flamboyantly colourful marine species found in the teeming waters of Phuket and elsewhere. Main resorts in this area are the colonial Cape Pawna, The Bay and Novotel Panwa.

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Phuket Patong Beach

Patong Beach is the largest beach resort on the island of Phuket. Mostly made up of hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and various tourist attractions, offers a "thriving nightlife", with numerous "entertainment complexes" and countless bars clustered together in and around Bangla Road. Patong's two main axes are the aptly named Beach Road (Thawiwong) and Thanon Rat-U-Thit 200 Pi running parallel a few hundred meters inland. A handful of streets and sois (alleys) connect the two, the largest and most central of which is Bangla Road.

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Phuket Other beaches

There are still "less known", but beautiful sandy beaches, rocky coast lines and places with large limestone cliffs facing the ocean. These beaches are:  the quiet Nai Yang Beach (Indigo Pearl),  the idyllic Surin Beach (Surin Beach Resort), the exclusive Pansea Beach (Amanpuri & The Chedi), the beautiful and secluded Nai Thorn Beach (Andaman White Beach Resort) , Tri Trang & nearby Freedom Beach (Merlin Beach Resort) , the small Ao Sane Beach (Baan Krating), the Rawai Area (with the unique & romantic Mangosteen Hillside Resort & Hip Trendy Evason Resort), Layan Beach, which is north of Bangtao (Layan Beach Resort & Bundarika Villas), the "11 km long" Mai Khao Beach (JW Marriott Resort & Spa) or the sleepy Nai Thon Beach (Nainthonburi Beach Resort), and nearby exclusive Trisara with its own private bay.

Nai Yang Beach is a quiet beach located in Sirinat National Park only 5 minutes south of Phuket International Airport where you can see the planes go in for landing. The casuarina-fringed beach have a few shops, bars, restaurants and a couple of resorts along the beach road: the newest being the "Indigo Pearl". The tourist part of the beach has sunbeds and umbrellas and is very clean, but not so clean outside this area.

Surin Beach is on the west coast of Phuket, about 15 km north of Patong. Peaceful and idyllic with white, soft sands and an inviting warm sea. Surin Beach still has a small village atmosphere, but this is gradually changing as more and more major housing developments and hotel projects get underway. The beach itself is lined with tall casuarina trees and small Thai style restaurants. There is no nightlife to speak of, but there are many quality restaurants serving a variety of cuisines. Here the Surin Beach Resort is one of the most Family Friendly hotel in Phuket. But "be careful" Surin beach can become quite dangerous in the monsoon season (May to October) due to its steeply sloping beach.

Pansea is an exclusive beach (410 mr.) reserved for the luxurious Amanpuri and The Chedi resorts. It is located two minutes north of Surin Beach, and it is off limits if you are not a guest at Chedi or Amanpuri.

Nai Thorn Beach is a beautiful beach where the water is clean and crystal clear. A smaller sister beach to Nai Thon to the north. Andaman White Beach Resort occupy the beach front at a remote part of the island where only a few tourists are to be seen. Going with a boat is now the only way you can visit the beach. Nai Thorn is one of the best and least crowded beaches on Phuket west coast.

Tri Trang Beach, where Merlin Beach Resort is located, is not a swimming beach, or it's only possible to swim at high tide since the sea bead is filled with rocks and corals in shallow water. But even at high tide you have to be careful so not to cut yourself on the rocks before you reach deeper waters 40 meters off the beach. Tri Trang is very close to the popular and one of Phuket's finest beaches Freedom Beach that can only be reach by boat. From Tri Trang long tail boat cost only THB 200 baht per person.

Mai Khao Beach (11 Km) is a mostly deserted beach where sea turtles comes to lay their eggs. Mai Khao's golden sand stretches many kilometers along the Andaman Sea and is Phuket longest beach. Spanning over a half kilometer along the beach, the luxurious 5-star JW Marriott Phuket Resort and Spa is the only resort in the area. Adjacent to the Sirinath Marine National Park and protected sea turtle nesting area.

Nai Thon Beach is located 15 minutes south of the International Airport in a green valley surronded by high hills. It is 1 km long. Nai Thon is a sleepy village with a few resorts, restaurants and a diving shop lining the beach road. Even with the arrival of the new Naithonburi Beach Resort, the beach is never crowded with lots of space between the one row of sunbeds lining the beach. In this area is also located the exclusive Trisara on a private bay. Nai Thon has excellent water quality like neighbor Banana Rock and Nai Thorn beaches.

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