Best Things to Do in Phuket

Phuket rewards visitors who look beyond the resort sunlounger to combine its west-coast bays with its tin-era architectural heritage, coastal viewpoints and world-famous marine parks. Group your activities into a west-coast beach and sunset day, an Old Town heritage and food day, and an east-coast island cruise.

1. Walk the Sino-Portuguese arcades of Phuket Old Town. Follow the covered five-foot ways along Thalang Road, Dibuk Road, Phang Nga Road and pastel-painted Soi Romanee, stepping into nineteenth-century tin-baron mansions such as Chinpracha House and the Thai Hua Museum.
2. Cruise among the vertical limestone karsts of Phang Nga Bay. Glide by boat from Phuket's east-coast piers into sheltered emerald lagoons inside Hong Island and Panak Island, where sheer karst towers rise hundreds of metres straight out of the sea.
3. Swim and snorkel around Nai Harn, Kata Noi and Freedom Beach. Escape the busy central strip for the casuarina-shaded crescent of Nai Harn in the far south, the clear granite boulders of Yanui and Kata Noi, or jungle-ringed Freedom Beach.
4. Watch the Andaman sunset from Promthep Cape and Windmill Viewpoint. Stand on Phuket's southernmost rocky headland framed by sugar palms as the sun drops behind Koh Man island, or pause one bay north at the quieter Windmill hilltop terrace above Yanui.
5. Visit Wat Chalong (Wat Chaiyathararam). Explore the island's most revered Buddhist monastery, climbing to the breezy upper terrace of its 60-metre Phra Mahathat Chedi, which houses a sacred bone relic of the Buddha above gilded murals.
6. Take an early boat to the Phi Phi Islands and Bamboo Island. Cross the Andaman Sea from Rassada Pier or Royal Phuket Marina to snorkel over coral gardens, view the cliffs of Maya Bay and Pileh Lagoon, and walk the white sandbar of Koh Pai (Bamboo Island).
7. Eat your way through Phuket's Michelin Bib Gourmand Peranakan kitchens. Sample slow-braised moo hong pork belly, crab curry with rice vermicelli (mee hoon gaeng poo), wok-charred Hokkien mee and crispy o-aew shaved-ice dessert in Old Town.
8. Browse the Sunday Lard Yai Walking Street Market. Every Sunday afternoon and evening, Thalang Road closes to traffic for a lantern-lit heritage festival of Baba-Nyonya sweets, grilled satay, batik textiles and live street music.
9. Take in the Three Beaches Panorama at Karon Viewpoint (Khao Sam Haad). Look north from the coastal ridge road between Nai Harn and Kata across the three consecutive turquoise crescents of Kata Noi, Kata Yai and Karon.
10. Watch jetliners land over the sand at Mai Khao Beach (Sirinat National Park). Walk the ten-kilometre northern shoreline where pine trees meet the Andaman surf right beside the airport runway threshold.