The Phuket, one of the most popular touristic destination in Southeast Asia. I have visited Phuket during July. I took flight from Bangkok and book place in Phuket town. My plan was to stay there for 14 days and visit most of the beaches in Phuket by buses or other available public transportation. It was exciting for me that I am going to visit this area of Thailand despite the fact that actually I am not fan of spending time on beaches. Of course as always most of the details how it goes with services and prices I had been discovering after I arrived there.
I will describe mostly my thoughts and situations I had to go through. After I arrive at airport I took taxi to my hotel. I have met some people which went by share mini bus but unfortunately my place wasn’t on the list. First things I would like to mention, taxis are very expensive about 600 THB for trip and it doesn’t matter how far you go, no taxi meters in Phuket at all. Phuket town wasn’t the best choice because the town wasn’t located nearby any beach but prices were better and I could visit all beaches from there by bus. Unfortunately it wasn’t as simple as I thought. Buses were cheap only up to 50 THB for trip. To get to destination was easy but get out of there that was another story so sometimes happened that I miss bus and I had to use taxi anyway. I asked local people about time of departure of buses but everybody said something different and another problem was that bus station wasn’t mark it was difficult to find spot where the bus stop. Otherwise it was interesting experience for me at the time because I hadn’t encounter something similar before. During my visit weather was in Phuket. Big storms were coming and leaving almost at every hour at when it started it was huge mess.
In Phuket town every Sunday are open street markets full of souvenirs, clothes and food busy and crowded, occupied mostly by tourist similar to other parts of Thailand. Streets were full of people which offering taxis and tuk-tuk what was pretty annoying after time, same situation was all over the popular places. Once I had visited this market later I got poisoning by food. This was first time ever after two months spent in Asia. It was virus which I already encountered long time before. It was quite painful. Yeah, whole day I spent on toilet in pain. The Patong beach was first which I visited. Very crowded, dirty beach, too much tourist everywhere, nothing what I wanted to see. Same it was at another beaches especially at the west coast. At Patong area you can visit stadium for Thai box and Muay Thai fights, lot of bars and tattoo saloons.
I visited almost all beaches but everywhere was almost the same, crowded and dirty. The Karon beach I would say was cleaner and not very busy but generally it was disaster. The main issue with dirty beaches is due to polluted Indian Ocean which is full of garbage and most of the coast on west side is constantly polluted by garbage alluvial from sea. Despite the fact they are trying to keep the beaches clean the sea bring the crap all over again so its unending circle. I bet Phuket has still nice places but inaccessible for common tourist with lower budget. Most of areas are relatively expensive and that’s another point why I wouldn’t recommend to visit this place.
As you can notice it wasn’t too much positive things what I can write about Phuket, well nothing is perfect and that how it goes. I know I should check and do more planning before, I could do things differently but the fact is I didn’t have too much experience with travel through Asia so Phuket I would call collateral damage but for other hand positive site of it, it helped me to do things better and understand more for future travels.
After this I have come back to Bangkok. Later my travel visa was expiring so I had to leave Thailand. My other plans was to go back to Europe if I would not be successful in Singapore. I have decided to go back to Europe due to my plan to find the job. But before I have visit last city.
Next destination I’ll write about is Hong Kong.