AO KARON

20km southwest of Pheket town, AO KARON is only about 5km south from Patong beach, but a lot less congested. With the help of a healthy scattering of café-bars, restaurants and relatively inexpensive guest houses, Ao Karon generally tempts the younger couples and mid-budget backpackers away from its increasingly manic neighbor. Although the central stretch of beach front is dominated by large-capacity hotels, the beach itself is completely free of developments, and elsewhere you’ll find mainly low-rise guest houses and bungalows, some of them set around gardens, interspersed with stretches of undeveloped grassland.

While long and sandy, the beach offers very little in the way of shade; south of the Phuket Arcadia it feels quite exposed because of the road that runs right alongside it, and it almost disappears at high tide. That said, it’s a popular place to swim, and local entrepreneurs rent out parasols and deckchairs on some stretches. Be warned that the undertow off Ao Karon is treacherously strong during the monsoon season from May to October, so you should heed the warning signs and flags and ask for local advice – fatalities are not uncommon. For the rest of the year there’s plenty of scope for water-sports here; windsurfing is good all year round, and the reefs around the tiny island of Ko Pu, just off the headland separating Karon from neighboring Ao Kata Yai to the south, make for enjoyable snorkeling. The tiny bay just north of Ao Karon – known as Karon Noi or Relax Bay – is almost exclusively patronized by guests of the swanky Le Meridien hotel, but non guests are quite welcome to swim and sunbathe here. For inland entertainment, you could do a round at Dino Park mini-golf, next to Marina cottages on the Kata/ Karon headland, which is part of a pseudo-prehistoric theme park comprising a dino burger bar, a dino restaurant and an erupting “volcano”; or try the House of Horror theme park on Patong