Is Phuket Worth Visiting? One Trip, Then It's Just an Airport

Our first trip to Thailand, in December 2024, started with a booking mistake we didn't recognise as one until we were on a ferry back across the Andaman with four hours to think about it.

We flew into Phuket and out of Phuket, because Krabi airport had nothing going to Bangalore. Sensible on a booking screen. What it meant in practice was that after a week of Ao Nang and Koh Lanta — the part of the trip we actually wanted — we had to backtrack the whole way to catch a flight home.

Three trips later, Phuket has been our arrival airport, our departure airport, and a one-night stop. I've stopped thinking of it as a destination. That's not a complaint, but it isn't what the internet will tell you about Phuket either.

The short version

Go once. Stay in the Old Town, not on a beach. Give it two nights. Then go somewhere else for the actual holiday, and let Phuket be what it's genuinely good at — the airport that gets you everywhere better.

What Phuket is actually good for: the Old Town

The Old Town is Sino-Portuguese shophouses, and it photographs far better after dark than it does at midday. Most of what we did on that first trip was here and in the streets around it, and it was enough. Thalang Road and Phang Nga Road are the two that matter — walk them both and you've seen the part of Phuket worth seeing.

One practical thing that cost us an evening: the night market isn't nightly. It runs on the weekend. Check the day before you plan your evening around it, because we didn't.

Where to stay in the Old Town

We've stayed in two places in Phuket Town and both work, for different reasons.

Baan Suwantawe on Dibuk Road is the one we keep going back to — December 2024 and again in July 2026. That isn't loyalty, it's that the location does the work. You walk to dinner. You walk to the night market. You don't negotiate a fare to do either, which on this island turns out to matter more than it should.

The Royal Phuket City Hotel is the other, from that first December. The rooms are genuinely good, the in-house bakery is worth walking down for, and it's well connected — the free city shuttle stops directly outside the lobby, which is the cheapest way to move around Phuket Town and something almost nobody mentions. One caveat, and it's a specific one: there are no balconies. If you smoke, that shapes your evening.

Where to eat

Do the burnt butter toast at Phuketique on Yaowarat Road. Thick bread soaked in butter and sugar, fried until the edges go dark, ice cream melting on top. It's the one thing in Phuket I'd tell you to plan around, and the queue outside the blue-and-yellow shophouse in the afternoon tells you everyone else got the message first.

The rest of the eating is on Thalang and Phang Nga roads, within a few minutes of either hotel. Street stalls at one end, sit-down places at the other, and the gap between them in quality is smaller than the gap in price.

Where it falls down: the beaches

In August 2025 we stayed at the Novotel on Kamala Beach, and it was fine. That's the honest word for it. Upscale in a way that didn't feel like ours, and far enough from anything ordinary that finding a local night market meant a long walk to somewhere that wasn't especially local once we got there.

Nothing was wrong with it. But set it against Ao Nang, Koh Lanta or Lamai and there's no contest — and the reason isn't the sand.

The real cost of Phuket isn't the room rate

Phuket is expensive in the obvious way: hotels cost more than the equivalent anywhere else we've stayed in Thailand. But the cost that actually shapes the trip is transport.

Phuket is big and spread out, so everything is a journey. And renting your own way around it — car or scooter — needs an International Driving Permit with the right endorsement. Without one you're paying someone else to drive you every time you want to leave the hotel. That adds up quietly, and it changes how a day feels. Staying in the Old Town is the cheapest fix: you walk most of it, and the free city shuttle covers a good deal of the rest.

Compare that with what we've been doing everywhere else. In Ao Nang, everything is within walking distance, so the transport line in the budget is close to zero. On Koh Lanta, a scooter is ฿250 a day and the whole island opens up. On Koh Phangan, the same. That's the real difference — not the price of a beer, the price of moving.

Getting out of Phuket

Thailand's transit infrastructure is the thing I'd praise ahead of any beach here, and Phuket is where you'll use it most.

Ferry to Ao Nang and Krabi: three to four hours. Take the large ferry, not the speedboat. The crossing is bumpy either way; the speedboat is the same water at higher speed, and you feel every bit of it.

Bus to Krabi: four to five hours overland on good roads. Slower on paper than the ferry, easier on the body.

Book through 12Go Asia. Ferries, buses, minivans and combinations of all three. We've used it across trips and it hasn't gone wrong yet.

Phuket also works as the jumping-off point for Khao Sok. We haven't done it yet, so I can't tell you what it's like — but it's the one thing that would make us stay an extra night on this side of the country.

Who should stay in Phuket

First-timers, for two nights, in the Old Town. There's enough there to justify it, and you'll have seen the part of Phuket that's genuinely worth seeing.

Anyone after a beach holiday should go to Ao Nang, Koh Lanta or Lamai instead and treat Phuket as the door they come in through. Three trips in, that's what it's been for us, and we've stopped feeling like we're missing anything.

What we'd do differently

The booking mistake from December 2024 turned out to be useful. Flying in and out of Phuket forced us to see it properly, decide what it was for, and stop trying to make it a destination.

If you're flying from India and your islands are on the Krabi side, check whether you can fly out of Krabi before you book both legs through Phuket. We couldn't, and the backtrack cost us the better part of a day. Now we land, eat something, and get on a boat.

If this is your first Thailand trip, the visa rules for Indian travellers and what four trips have actually cost us are the two worth reading next.