What I Would’ve Done Differently in Thailand: Phuket
In mid-2017, I traveled to Asia for the very first time for a one-month trip in Thailand and Cambodia (here’s the itinerary). The trip was an incredible experience, but there are some things I would’ve done differently. One of my biggest regrets was going to the island of Phuket.
When planning out trip, we knew we wanted to go to a Thai island, and we were limited in our choices since some islands aren’t accessible during the rainy season. We ultimately picked Phuket because of its convenience. It is accessible via bus to other parts of the country and has a major airport. It ended up being much easier to get to between Khao Sok National Park and Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Phuket is a large island, so we figured we could find a beach that was ok. We ended up settling on Kata Beach, which seemed like a better part of the island. However, we quickly learned that maybe we hadn’t made the best decision.
Everything was overpriced.
Everything in Phuket was incredibly overpriced, compared to Thailand and even compared to the U.S. at times. Our first night in Phuket, we split a small pizza and only drank water at a restaurant for dinner. Our bill ended up being over $20, and we were both still hungry. When we left and had to arrange a taxi to the airport, it cost us over $30, meanwhile in Chiang Mai, we spent less than $5 to take a tuk tuk to the airport.
The many food options around us weren’t great.
There were a few ok options that were, again, overpriced. There weren’t really even any good Thai food options. Everything else was of the absolute worst quality. I ordered a sandwich on the beach one night, and something was incredibly off with it. Another night, I ended up getting food poisoning that lasted for over 24 hours. We can’t be sure where it came from – maybe the sketchy sandwich, the pizza we ate that had been lying out in the restaurant, or from the crummy breakfast our excursion took us on (a man in our van home was sick, seemingly from that food). Overall, it was a struggle to find high quality food there, and we ended up eating a lot of 7-Eleven meals.
The beach was dirty.
While everything else in Phuket wasn’t our favorite, you would think the beach would be nice. I mean it’s hard to mess up a beach, right? Sadly, the beach was covered in trash. It was hard to enjoy a walk on the beach or a swim in the ocean with plastic bags and cans everywhere.
It’s overcrowded.
We had read that Kata Beach was quieter than others, but we picked it since it still had some restaurants and things to do. However, the beach, even in the rainy season, was incredibly crowded and actually very full of Russian tourists.
Perhaps a different beach in Phuket would’ve been better, but had we done the trip differently, I wish we would have at traveled to Krabi or Kho Samui or another island. While out of the way, any of the other islands would’ve been much more enjoyable and so worth the extra hassle of traveling to them.
Have you gone to Phuket? What was your experience like there? Is there another Thai island you’d recommend?
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