Kata Beach, Phuket, Thailand

​My advice for going to Phuket is simple: don’t.  I mean, if you like a beach swarming with tourists (and I mean swarming), then sure – go.  But I urge you to do your research first on which area of the island you want to stay.  Phuket has many beach towns, and then there is the actual town of Phuket.  We stayed on Kata Beach.  We didn’t even go into Phuket Town because we were so miserable with the million tourists on Kata Beach and didn’t want to add to the number of tourists pushing us off the sidewalk.  And they are ALL Russian.  Which is fine… don’t get me wrong.  I have several close Russian friends.  But it was just weird – they were literally all Russian in Kata Beach.  

And I’m not usually one to say stay away from a place just because of tourists.  I think that a lot of the time, a place has a lot of tourists for a reason.  Take Machu Picchu for example.  Yeah, it was miserable crawling through hundreds (thousands probably) of tourists to see the site, but it is breathtaking and worth it.  This… this is not worth it.  Just save your time and money and skip it.
 
If you do go, this is what I can tell you about our stay:
​

• We flew in, but you can also take a bus and a ferry (check out 12go.asia to book ferries and buses).  It’s over an hour ride to get to Kata Beach or to Phuket town from the airport, and our taxi broke down on our way.  Shit happens and all that, but it was a long day :)
  ​
• We stayed at Baantonkhao for 7 days.  I think there may have been mold in the room because we were sick with cold like symptoms the whole time we were there that went away mysteriously the day we stopped staying there.  It smelled too.  The lady who runs the place is super nice though, so I always feel bad saying bad things about a place when the people are nice.  But don’t stay there.

 

• Go to the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary (PES) – see video clips from our visit to PES here, and see more information on why you should NEVER RIDE AN ELEPHANT in this video here.

• If you need to pay a bribe to someone (which l talk more about in my Thailand overview blog post here), you can go to Kasikorn Bank (K-Bank) located at 1, Pak Bang Road, Tambon Ka Ron, Amphoe Mueang Phuket, Phuket, 83100, 83100, Thailand.​
  
  
• There’s a great burger joint… New York Burger Co.  The burgers are delicious, and they have jalapeño fried mac ‘n’ cheese. 
  
  
• The smoothies are cheap ($2-3 USD) and delicious.
  
  
• Get a lot of massages.  A 30 minute foot massage is only about $5 USD.
  
  
• To get to the next place (Railay Beach in Krabi), we used 12go.asia to book a ferry.  The ferry company, Lomprayah, actually came all the way to Kata Beach to pick us up at no extra cost.  I'd recommend them.  

See my overview of Thailand here and our photos from Thailand here.