It can be a challenge to decide in what area to stay for a destination you’ve never been before. Even though we’re traveling a lot, it can still take me hours of research before I have an image of where we’re going to and then some more time to actually find an accommodation that suits us. To give you an insight of this process; we’re not fulltime on holiday, so we approach every destination as a potential home and always try to find an accommodation in an area where we can ask ourselves the question ‘could we live here’?
In Phuket with all its beautiful beaches it’s not a surprise that the volume of tourism is higher along the coastline, with Patong being its centre. If you’re the type of person that likes to be where it is all happening, this is the place to be. There’s even the comfort of multiple food chains like KFC, Häagen-Dazs and two MacDonald’s and Starbucks within one hundred-metre distance. The adjacent beaches – Kata and Karon – are pretty much the same; everything is there for the tourists.
When we searched for accommodation, we ruled out Patong from the start and looked for a hotel in the area of Kata Beach, because we did want to have the possibility to go snorkelling from the beach and maybe to go diving (most of the dive centres were located in the vicinity of Kata). We were contemplating an accommodation further up North, but chose a hotel at the southernmost point of Kata, a two-minute walk from the beach, thinking we didn’t want to stay in a place too remote (looking back further North would have been the better option for us).
The first day in Kata we immediately went looking for the coral reef on the northern side of the beach and found it, so we could cross snorkelling of our list! By then we did not have a motorbike yet and had to find our meals at restaurants within walking distance of the hotel, which were all touristic places with mediocre food – knowing how good (and cheap) the food in Thailand can be, these are not the places we’d like to spend our money on. From the second day we rented a motorbike and that is when the fun really began!
What are your criteria when you’re looking for an accommodation? Do you like to be where it is all happening, or do you prefer a more remote area?
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