Karon Beach Hotels

Karon Beach is normally thought of as the second most touristy beach in Phuket after Patong. Probably true, but it's way quieter than Patong, much cleaner, and if you drive from Patong to Karon you will see what I mean. Like a breath of fresh air, with flowers, trees, a beach that has no direct development except for the new Centara Grand at one end, and just over 3km away the Karon Beach Resort right at the other end. The rest of the beach is natural - sand, some greenery, trees, and there is a drainage canal running along part of the beach, but it's been built to look nice, you have benches to sit on, plenty of beach access and a golden dragon statue too!

Check Agoda for a full list of Karon beach hotels.

Karon has 2 main centers, the most developed near the north end with the road heading inland from the circle to the temple. I have written about Karon Beach on the blog already where you can find more general information. The north end can be quite busy. Lots of hotels and smaller guesthouses and lots of restaurants too. Past the circle further north are a few hotels - Phuket Ocean Resort, Front Village, Centara Grand and then just off the beach are Centara Villas and Karon Cliff which are on the hillside with a great view along the whole beach.

Then along the beach road (a small road runs all along from the circle to the south) you have resorts, some smaller, some larger, such as South Sea, Karon Princess, The Hilton, Thavorn Palm Beach, Moevenpick, Old Phuket, Karon Sea Sands and more. Each resort has its property and each one keeps itself clean. There are regular beach clean ups too. As you get to the south end, a road heads inland (I work up there at Sunrise Divers), and up that road is Phuket Orchid plus many smaller hotels like Karon Place, Casa Brasil, and some lower budget guesthouses like the Pineapple. Karon has accommodation to suit every budget. The last hotels to the south end are Andaman Seaview, Phuket Island View, Horizon and then Karon Beyond Resort and Marina Phuket. If you stay near the south end, you can also walk to Kata Beach in about 10 - 15 minutes

Recommended Karon Beach Hotels

Pacific Club Resort



The Pacific Club Resort is at the north end of Karon, not right by the beach but on a hillside up a small road, great views, peace and quiet, a 10 minute walk into the busy end of Karon. This hotel consistently gets good reviews, and is in my Top 10 Phuket Hotels list.

• Pacific Club Resort - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Pacific Club Resort - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Pacific Club Resort - Over 150 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Phuket Orchid Resort



Phuket Orchid is quite a big hotel with over 500 rooms, the entrance is 1 minute walk to Karon beach. Great for families with several large swimming pools. It's on the side road heading off the beach - walk up that road for restaurants and bars and Sunrise Divers, where you can find me :) A friend of mine was manager of this resort for a while - he still works for the same company managing a resort in Samui.

• Phuket Orchid - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Phuket Orchid - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Phuket Orchid - Over 175 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Marina Phuket Resort



The Marina Phuket Resort sits on the headland right at the south end of Karon Beach. The main entrance is up the road a little from the beach, but some of the rooms ahve a fantastic seaview and they have a restaurant called On The Rock which sits above the beach. Always gets good reviews, and close to Kata and Karon beaches.

• Marina Phuket - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Marina Phuket - Check Rates and Availability @ Hotels Combined

Old Phuket Hotel



The Old Phuket is tucked away up a side road near the middle of Karon beach - the side road is for hotel access only, not a through road, so it's very quiet and just a couple of minutes walk to the beach. Hotel is designed in "olde Phuket" style - if you want to see the real thing, take a tour of Phuket Town!

• Old Phuket Hotel - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Old Phuket - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Old Phuket - Over 500 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Boomerang Village



Boomerang Village - a bit of an oddity, not by the beach, I guess at least 10 minutes walk, it's up on the hillside between Karon and Kata off the "back road" called Patak Road (good for finding small local restaurants!). It gets great reviews, always sits in the top 10 on TripAdvisor,

• Boomerang Village - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Boomerang Village - Booking @ Agoda.com
• Boomerang Village - 150+ Reviews @ Agoda.com

More Karon Beach Hotels

• Karon Princess review on Jamie's Phuket
• Le Meridien Resort review on Jamie's Phuket
• Phuket Island View review on Jamie's Phuket
• Centara Grand Resort review on Jamie's Phuket
• Hilton Phuket Info & Booking at Agoda.com
• All Karon Beach Hotels @ Agoda.com

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Diving Phuket with Sunrise Divers

Want to dive in Phuket or the Similan Islands? You can contact me at Sunrise Divers!

I came to Phuket in 1999, not with any plan to stay forever, get married and raise a family, but simply to find work as a scuba diving instructor and "give Thailand a try" with a vague plan to move on to other SE Asian countries and try them as well. I had done my divemaster course back in 1996 in Utila (Honduras) and gone back there in 1998 to become an instructor, with half a mind to stay on that little island forever. But quite a few instructors I knew there had worked in Thailand and it sounded interesting so after about 18 months on Utila, I came to Thailand. I came to Phuket first because my reading on the internet led me to believe that the best diving in Thailand would be at the Similan islands. So I trolled around Patong looking for work, got some work teaching, did a couple of trips to Burma, and then got a job on a liveaboard in the Similan Islands. From the first dive, I was a happy diver! Plans to maybe move on somewhere else were abandoned.



(above) That's me in the Similan Islands back in 2000. The rest is history. I worked for one company for about a year, met my wife who was working in the office for the same company. Then I decided to work freelance to have a bit more time with her, and some time to explore Phuket. Freelance work can pay well if you're lucky but some months are better than others. I was teaching courses and going on liveaboards, but we knew by then that we were going to have a baby, and so a fixed job was needed...

Sunrise Divers in 2001 was a little shop on the main road about 200m from Karon Beach. Not a real busy shop, but when I started working in October 2001 I was fairly busy teaching dive courses, doing the occasional liveaboard to the Similan Islands or overnight trip to Phi Phi, or otherwise taking the office chair. Quite busy in high season, but hardly any business in low season. So we started doing some major work on our website. New design, lots of optimisation, I read a lot of articles and web forums on how to get a better Google ranking. Keywords, titles, h1 tags, links, is this the life of a dive instructor?! But hey, it kept me busy for low season and it worked - our website rose up the Google searches and suddenly we had emails to answer, quite a lot of emails. And a large number of the mails were requesting liveaboards to the Similan Islands.



We moved to a much larger dive shop in 2004, with 3 floors, aircon office, aircon classroom, large equipment room... we bought more dive gear and now have more than 25 sets, all kept very well serviced. Sunrise Divers is a PADI 5 star center, and we joined the local recompression chamber network. It was around 2003 that people really started to book things online, and email became normal for communication. Before that it was much more normal to just show up in Phuket and go looking for a dive shop. We've made several redesigns of our website since 2003, the latest features a big "back office" (database) for liveaboards. I still look after the website, and since a few years ago I stay full time in the dive shop. These days, everyone expects fast replies to emails and most people who have booked online will come to the shop looking for Jamie. Our dive shop is still in Karon (map), a bit off the main road in a little square called Karon Place next door to a hotel of the same name. Some big hotels like the Orchid, Hilton and Thavorn Palm Beach are a few minutes walk away, and there are many smaller hotels and guesthouses in the area. The south end of Karon Beach is also good for snorkeling and even for diving.

A few photos of Sunrise Divers dive shop...





Sunrise Divers is open year round - we might close a few days here and there such as Songkran or Christmas, and maybe on the odd day in low season due to holidays, but you can dive in Phuket year round at local dive sites, so we stay open. The best diving of course is to be done by liveaboard. The Similan Islands National Park is open only from November to early May. Liveaboards can be as short as 2 days, or as long as 10 days. The average is a 4 day trip which will dive at the Similan islands, Koh Bon, Koh Tachai and Richelieu Rock. Some longer trips also dive in Burma. Liveaboards are GREAT! Wake in the morning, coffee, briefing, gear on and wake up on your first dive!





Whether you are an experienced diver, a new diver, need a refresher or want more dive training, come and see me at Sunrise Divers. There are liveaboards to suit all budgets, day trips to many different dive sites, or we can teach you to dive.. I won't be the instructor though, I have not done any teaching for about 4 years.. too busy tapping away on the keyboard! Below are a bunch of links to the Sunrise Divers website for a lot more information that I can provide on a blog post. Hope to see you or get an email (info@sunrise-divers.com) from you soon!

Sunrise Divers - Diving Phuket, the Similan islands and more!

• Liveaboards to the Similan Islands
• Day trips around Phuket and Phi Phi
• Komodo / Raja Ampat (Indonesia) liveaboards

• PADI Dive Courses
• Sunrise Divers Reviews on TripAdvisor

Sunrise Divers - Location Map


View Sunrise Divers - Diving in Phuket and the Similan Islands in a larger map

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Patong Beach Hotels

Patong Beach - you either love it or you don't. I am not sure what people expect to find in Patong. I quote from a couple of big travel websites : "Patong is the most famous beach resort on Phuket. With its wide variety of activities and nightlife, Patong is an ideal place to party and play." - or "The Patong of today is a seething mass of tourism, squalor and unrestricted development, a mess of hotels, bars, restaurants, travel agents, massage parlours, tailor shops and touts". You can put a spin on Patong beach and make it sound exciting and exotic, or you can speak your mind! Patong is the most developed beach in Phuket, it can be crowded and noisy, you can get pestered by touts, you can hardly see the beach for all the beach chairs. BUT although I might not be a fan (I only go to Patong if I must), plenty of tourists love it, love the nightlife, the endless choice of restaurants, the fact that you are never far from anything you need. You now have the huge Jungceylon shopping mall with cinema right in the middle of Patong, there are bars and girls, nightclubs, any kind of food you want including all the main fast food chains and about 5 branches of Starbucks.... and more importantly, Patong does have some very good hotels.

• Full List of Patong Beach Hotels @ Agoda.com

Jamie's Phuket is a doorway into the other Phuket, so until now Patong Beach has not had much of a mention. Any other beach area is quieter and more relaxing. I work at Karon Beach which has plenty of hotels and restaurants too but is much less developed than Patong and the beach is much nicer. But Patong does have certain advantages in terms of availability of shopping, dining and hotel choices. I already have a page on Jamie's Phuket with recommended hotels, but it's getting a bit big and I figured it was time to split the hotel recommendations into different beaches - starting with Patong beach hotels.

Recommended Patong Beach Hotels

Amari Coral Beach Resort



The Amari has been around for a long time, great location right at the south end of Patong away from the crowds, very nice place to relax but you can walk to the middle of Patong in 10 minutes.

• Amari Coral Beach Resort - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Amari Coral Beach Resort - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Amari Coral Beach Resort - Over 500 Reviews @ Agoda.com

La Flora Resort



La Flora is quite a new hotel, opened in 2008 and it's right in the middle of Patong, right on the beach (which not many hotels in Patong can claim). The best rooms have a "right by the sea" view! And you're close to everything.

• La Flora - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• La Flora - Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• La Flora - Over 600 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Yorkshire Hotel and Spa



The Yorkshire - used to be called the Yorkshire Inn, now Hotel (and Spa, you gotta have the "and Spa"!) I know the place well, used to work on the same street, small, friendly, very central for nightlife, shopping, restaurants and so on. And a good price too!

• Yorkshire Hotel - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Yorkshire Hotel - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Yorkshire Hotel - Over 1,000 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Merlin Beach Resort



Merlin Beach Resort is not actually in Patong. You have to drive a couple of miles, past the Amari, over a headland and you find the Merlin, on its own beach away from the crowds, nice but you can't walk into Patong (well you can, but easier to take a taxi and the taxi drivers know that...).

• Merlin Beach Resort - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Merlin Beach Resort - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Merlin Beach Resort - Over 250 Reviews @ Agoda.com

Burasari Resort



The Burasari is just south of the busy center of Patong, close to the Holiday Inn. A couple of minutes walk to the beach, Burasari has regular rooms and an amazing collection of "Mood Suites" such as Smooth Whisky, Tropical Dream and Blue Breeze. Very popular!

• Burasari Resort - Review on Jamie's Phuket
• Burasari Resort - Check Rates and Availability @ Agoda.com
• Burasari Resort - Over 2,000 Reviews @ Agoda.com


More Patong Beach Hotels

I have featured a few others on this site, don't want to overload one page! Patong is what it is... has a lot going for it, but if you want peace and quiet you should look at any other beach in Phuket! Here's some more recommended Patong beach hotels and links for where to book them or get more information:

• Baan Yin Dee review on Jamie's Phuket
• Graceland Resort review on Jamie's Phuket
• Aspery Resort review on Jamie's Phuket
• Tri Trang Beach Resort review on Jamie's Phuket
• All Patong Beach Hotels @ Agoda.com

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The Racha Hotel on Racha Yai Island

The Racha Resort is located on Racha Yai Island about 20 kilometers south of Phuket, so right away you have something different. Racha Yai is a small island with sandy beaches, shallow reefs, and is a place I have been countless times for diving - day trips come here every day from Phuket. If you stay here, you can't complain that it's too far from town, or too far from the nightlife - I guess you will stay here if you WANT to be away from the crowds and away from the bars. The resort has an environmental message (their website says "the resort strives to be recognised as a leader in responsible and environmentally sustainable tourism") which I think must be important when you are based on a small island - you have to take care of resources.

The Racha has 70 villas, some with private pools, all overlooking the ocean and it's a view without any concrete or other hotels, just ocean. I note that some reviews mention the beach in front of the resort - it's not a private beach, maybe some people are expecting it to be - but daytrippers also use the beach.. they can't use the huge infinity horizon pool though :) Of course for a hotel like The Racha you are not paying low rates, right now I see rates on Agoda from about 15,000 Baht per night (for April) or only about 6000 Baht in low season. The resort has several restaurants which will also be priced to match.. and on Racha Yai island don't expect to find many more dining options save for a couple of small beachside places. The Racha is a little hideaway, good for hiding from the world and being looked after.

Reviews on Agoda are very positive, and it probably should be on my Best Phuket Hotels list, except when I wrote the list it was not in the TripAdvisor Top 10 .. it is now, though that list changes daily.. always makes me laugh that in among all the reviews saying "paradise" you get one terrible review, it's the same for all hotels and you learn which ones to ignore!

The Racha Resort - Booking & Information Links

• The Racha Resort - Rates and Reservations at Agoda.com
• The Racha Resort - Guest Reviews at Agoda.com

The Racha Resort - Photos

 

 

Phuket Hotels - More Information - Online Booking

• More of Jamie's Phuket Hotel Suggestions
• Top 10 Phuket Hotels
• Phuket Hotels - Book Online at Agoda.com
• Thailand Hotel Booking at Agoda.com

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