Ko
Phuket - Phuket Island was the first
place I ever visited in Thailand, and I must have liked it because I've
been back several times. Ko Phuket is located in the Andaman Sea off
Thailand's west coast. It's Thailand's largest island and it is connected
to the peninsular mainland by a bridge. Click on the thumbnail to see the
larger version of the map...
The main tourist beaches are located
down the west side of the island, north and south of the the main resort
town of Patong. The scene in Patong is far too busy for my liking - it's
where the package holiday hotels are located, and there seem to be more
restaurants serving Italian, German, and French food than there are
serving Thai food. Karon and Kata beaches are south of Patong, and they're
a lot quieter, with a long stretches of squeaky white sand, clear blue
water, and a million places selling seafood. There are some big hotels
here, but you can also find a good selection of beach bungalows at the
cheaper end of the market.
How to get there - There
are no trains to Phuket, so you can either fly or travel overnight from
Bangkok on a bus. I've done both, but the bus journey is not very
relaxing. The flight time is a little over an hour, and the airport's
about half an hour's drive from Phuket Town and a little more to the
beaches.
Where to stay - The
first time I stayed in Karon was in 1989, and I happened to pick the Karon
Seaview Bungalows. This is a little development of concrete chalets with
fans and attached bathrooms, fairly centrally located on the main beach
road. The bungalows are pretty basic, but the beds are huge, and you get a
couple of deck chairs and a little shaded balcony. There's a decent little
restaurant at the front which serves western and toned-down Thai food all
day every day. No doubt there are lots of similar bungalow outfits along
the stretch of beach road, and further south into Kata village. If you
don't like the look of the Karon Seaview, try somewhere else.
What to do in the day - Read
a book, go for a swim, have a bite to eat, and have a wander round the
shops in Karon itself or Kata village, just down the road. You can hire a
jeep and take a tour round the island - shopping in Phuket Town, through
the rubber plantations, or up to the Nai Yang National Park near the
airport. There are some waterfalls to go and see up the main 402 Highway.
If you're feeling like a more adventurous trip, there are two I've been on
which were good fun.
The first was a boat trip to the Phi
Phi Islands, which was organised by one of
the little travel agents on Karon Beach. We got picked up by a mini-bus
early in the morning, and driven to catch a boat from Phuket Town. I think
it was at least a couple of hours later that we reached the little group
of islands around Phi Phi. We stopped in the middle of a bay, and jumped
off the boat with our snorkels and face masks, and if you haven't seen
coral formations first hand yet, I can only say you don't know what you're
missing. The formations were about 20m below us, and everything was
crystal clear. We spent an hour there, and then got dropped off on Ton Sai
beach on Ko Phi Phi Don, which was cluttered with tumbledown little beach
bungalows made from bamboo. It's 10 years on now, so I dare say that
things have changed, but I'd still recommend it. If I was going back, I'd
probably stay a few nights.
The second was a bus and boat trip
to the weird limestone outcrops of the Phang
Nga region, towards Krabi. The craggy
limestone towers stand up to 300m high, and they're covered in a lush
green vegetation. They are set among mangrove swamps which can be
navigated by long-tail boats. The bus sets off early from Phuket and it's
a long day trip, so you might be better off staying in or around Phang Nga
to make the best of it. Anyway, when I went, it was an organised tour with
lunch thrown in, and it included a trip around the mangroves, and an hour
or so on Khao Ping Gan - better known as "James
Bond Island" from when it featured as
Scaramanga's hideaway island in The Man with the Golden Gun.
What to do at night - Eat
some seafood in one of a number of restaurants along the beach road.
They
all display their fresh fish on icy trays at the front of the restaurant,
and you can find snappers, lobsters, huge prawns, and all kinds of other
goodies. There are a few ordinary bars in Kata, and there are a couple of
"bar-beer" complexes, one in Karon and one in Kata, where the
bar girls, music systems and western videos all compete for your
attention. When you sit down at one of these, the chances are you'll get
roped into playing Connect 4, or backgammon, or jenga with the girls.
If
you bet money, you'll lose, so try to do so graciously. You'll also be fed
with peanuts and pineapple slices for free, until they're coming out of
your ears. If you're after something livelier, take a song-tao
into Patong, a 20 minute ride north. This is a very busy tourist town,
with hundreds of restaurants, bars, discos, karaoke lounges and
"bar-beer" complexes. There are also some live revue shows
featuring transvestite showgirls, which I've yet to sample, but I hear
they're worthwhile. Patong can get on your nerves after a while - four of
us blokes once spent a hectic few hours wandering among the bar-beers one
night until we couldn't stand it any longer. The cry that went up
seemed
almost impossible to understand later, back home in miserable London,
but at the time it was uttered, we all agreed completely: "Oh, for
God's sake, let's just find a bar with no women in
it..."
