Phuket

The west coast is where the island's beach reputation lives, and its beaches differ more than a coastline of this length has any right to. Patong is the most developed — a three-and-a-half-kilometre crescent with wall-to-wall accommodation, every water sport on offer, and the Bangla Road nightlife strip running just behind the sand. Karon, immediately south, is a wider and far less frenetic stretch backed by budget-to-midrange hotels; Kata and Kata Noi bring the surfers in when the southwest swell arrives, and turn glassy and clear once it passes. Kamala is family-paced and noticeably quieter; Surin and Bang Tao stretch north through the Laguna complex at the upmarket end. At the southern tip, Rawai keeps its fishing boats pulled up on the shore and Nai Harn holds a crescent bay that stays improbably calm for how beautiful it is. Furthest north, Mai Khao and Nai Yang border Sirinat National Park, where turtles nest in the cool months and the pace is genuinely unhurried — the trade-off being that everything else on the island is then a drive away.

Phuket Town's old quarter is among the most atmospheric historic districts in Thailand and one of the least visited by beach-focused travellers, which is their loss. Pastel Sino-Portuguese shophouses from the tin-mining boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries line Thalang Road, Dibuk Road and the much-photographed Soi Romanee in terracotta, mint and mustard. The Thai Hua Museum, in a restored shophouse, traces the Hokkien Chinese migration that built the island's economy in the first place. The Peranakan — Baba-Nyonya — inheritance is legible in all of it: in the architecture, in a local kitchen that runs to mee hokkien, o-tao and southern khanom jeen curries quite distinct from mainland Thai cooking, and above all in the Vegetarian Festival each autumn, when nine days of processions, firewalking and blade-climbing turn the town's Chinese shrines into one of Southeast Asia's most intense spectacles. On Sunday evenings the Lardyai walking street fills Thalang Road with food stalls, music and makers.

The east-coast piers are the reason Phuket works as a base rather than just a beach. Phang Nga Bay, half an hour to an hour out by longtail or speedboat, is the defining Andaman landscape: limestone towers rising sheer from green water, undercut at the waterline into overhangs, hidden beaches and sea caves. Khao Phing Kan — James Bond Island since The Man with the Golden Gun — is the single most photographed rock in the country. The most rewarding way into the bay is a sea kayak through the hongs, the collapsed cave lagoons reachable only at the right tide by paddling through low dark passages; John Gray's Sea Canoe pioneered those routes. Koh Panyi, a Muslim fishing village built entirely on stilts with its mosque and football pitch on the only flat ground available, is a genuinely different island life rather than a set piece. Further out lie the Phi Phi Islands, and within them Maya Bay, whose access has been managed and restricted since its closure and reopening — the rules there change with the recovery programme, so check the current position rather than a tour listing when it matters to you. Which coast to be on in the first place, and why the calendar decides it, is the subject of the Andaman or Gulf islands guide.

Phuket is the Andaman's dive gateway, with schools clustered in Patong, Kata and Chalong and a day-trip menu that stands on its own before anyone books a liveaboard. Shark Point holds resting leopard sharks; the King Cruiser wreck, a ferry that went down in 1997, is the region's accessible wreck dive; Anemone Reef sits alongside it; and Koh Racha Yai's white sand and reef-fish schools make it the standard beginner site. Multi-day liveaboards run out to the Similan Islands, where granite arches and seafans draw divers from across the world and whale sharks appear seasonally, and to the Surin Islands for their manta cleaning stations — both offshore marine parks, both closed for part of the year, so confirm the current park dates before building a trip around them. Open-water certification is one of the cheaper places in the world to earn it, over three to four days. Beyond the tank, Nai Yang has reliable kitesurfing wind in the cool months, Rawai suits windsurfers, the sheltered east-coast water is paddleboard territory, and Kata's monsoon swell is the island's surf.

Phuket International Airport (HKT) sits at the north end of the island and takes direct flights from across Asia, the Gulf and seasonal long-haul charters, which is what makes the island one of Thailand's few gateways you can reach without changing planes in Bangkok. It is also about forty-five minutes from the main west-coast beaches, a detail worth building into arrival day. Once here, the island is car-and-scooter country: there is no rail, the local bus system is nominal, and the practical choice is between ride-hailing, which shows its price up front, and tuk-tuks, which are considerably more expensive and negotiated before you get in. Scooters are everywhere and cheap by the day, and they are also how most visitors get hurt here — the licence, insurance and helmet argument is set out in full in the getting around Thailand guide, and it applies on Phuket with particular force because the island's hills, rain and traffic are unforgiving of inexperience.

Phuket has two quite different years. From about November to April the Andaman is calm and clear, the boat trips run reliably, and the island is at its busiest and priciest. From roughly May to October the southwest monsoon arrives: the offshore marine parks close for part of it, sea trips thin out or cancel at short notice, the west-coast swell that gives Kata its surf also produces genuinely dangerous rip currents, and accommodation can cost a fraction of its high-season rate. Two things follow. First, if boats and dive sites are the point of your trip, the season is not a preference but a prerequisite — the wet months are a fine time to be on Phuket for the island itself, and a poor time to plan a week of island-hopping. Second, the red flags on the beaches during those months are not decorative: they mark water that drowns strong swimmers every year, and the correct response is to stay out, not to judge the surf by how it looks from the sand.