Holidays in Phuket
If you are going to Phuket, here are some tips and thoughts on this resort that may come in handy:
1. Don't listen to the guides, rent a vehicle. Despite the left-hand traffic, you can drive in Thailand. There are such roads (they consist of only turns) that you simply won’t be able to drive fast there, which means that the risk is not great. It is very pleasant to travel around the island. We took a scooter (300 baht / day + 3000 baht deposit and a copy of the passport). Having refueled for 100 baht, we drove from Patong to the very south (to Rawai Beach) and returned. Be sure to take your driving license with you, sometimes local traffic cops raid, slow down everyone in a row and check. If you have category B, take a moped without fear, they don’t understand anything in our categories, you need the very fact of having rights. If you take a bike / scooter, take helmets for everyone, but the absence of a helmet is also a fine. True, the fines are not large - driving without a license is 300 baht, and if you get a fine, be sure to take a receipt and show it if you are stopped again that day. It is not customary to fine 2 times for the same thing. By the way, there are not a lot of gas stations there, and they are a place where there are 0.5 liter bottles of gasoline on the rack (the inscription "Gasolin" is it).
2. The excursions that we took from Natalie tour are very expensive (about 3.000 baht per person) and are partly "breeding" in nature, i. e. you are taken to all sorts of factories where after a little introductory speech about pearls / cashew nuts / latex... they offer you to buy something. It's terribly annoying, shopping tours should be, in my opinion, free. The level of guides is not lower, there are exceptions, which only confirms the rule. We really didn’t look for alternatives, although along the beach there are a lot of small offices that provide excursion services.
3. It will not work in dollars, as in other popular countries, everything is in local baht. The highest exchange rate we saw was at the airport, although it could just be a coincidence as exchange rate changes at least once a day. In Patong, exchangers are at every turn, on other beaches they are not in the know.
4. About shopping: what can you buy in Phuket (all the sensations about prices are relative to the Moscow level, so if you are from another city, then everything is possible differently) - leather goods (good quality and 50% cheaper), jewelry (prices for "factory", where we were taken higher than in Moscow, but I have not seen such beauty anywhere, although I have been to jewelry exhibitions in Moscow), pearls (buy in Rawai if you are there and know how to distinguish pearls from plastic), well, as everywhere, local souvenirs ))))))
5. Choosing a vacation spot in Phuket - Brief descriptions of the beaches (of course, this is not all, but only those that we visited during the holidays):
a) Patong - our hotel was there, a very large beach; very flat bottom; many cafes, shops and street vendors; 100 baht for a sun lounger with an umbrella per day; night entertainment street Banglaroad - at night a pedestrian street, where a lot of night bars, girls of easy virtue, as well as not only girls, ping-pong shows....and all other perversions; Simon's cabaret (transvestite show) is also located in Patong; All hotels here are located across the road from the beach.
b) Karon - also very large and with a flat bottom; it is dirtier here than in Patong, generally the dirtiest beach, as it seemed to us; a little less cafes; if there are shops, they are located in the depths, and not like in Patong near the beach; all hotels except one (in the northern part of the beach, I don’t know what it’s called, it seems to be not yet fully completed, but people already go there) are located across the road.
c) Big Kata (Main Kata) - the beach is slightly smaller than Karon and Patong; the bottom is already traditionally flat; more greenery than on previous beaches; shops are off to the side, at the southern end of the beach; across the road from the beach begins a large territory of some hotel (if you stay in this hotel, it will probably be super)))); cleanliness at the level of Patong; all the hotels that I saw there are located across the road (maybe there are also on the beach itself along the edges of the beach).
d) Small Kata (Kata Noi) - a small beach; bottom as on the previous ones; very green; there were not many people on the beach, but perhaps this is due to the fact that we were already there in the late afternoon; some of the hotels have their territory right on the sand of the beach.
e) Yanui (south of Nai Harn) - a very small beach in the south of the island; a lot of greenery; purely; few people, this is from the fact that there seems to be only one hotel and that's it; on this beach for 200 baht per hour you can take a kayak and swim (next to the beach there is an absolutely amazing small island); the only beach I have seen with a fairly rapid change in the level of the bottom.
f) Rawai (Rawai) - a beach where at 13:00 local time, fishermen bring fresh sea products, you can buy them live there, carry 4 meters across the road and cook as you like bat commercials for 100-150 (3 large tiger shrimp + half a kilo lobster = 1000 baht); for some reason, people don’t swim there, although the water is not dirty, though there are a lot of Thai boats, just in case, we didn’t swim either.