People ask me all the time: what do you do when you are not working? Do you still enjoy Phuket after 20 years? Where do you actually go?
It is a fair question. Living somewhere that millions of people visit as the highlight of their year creates an interesting relationship with that place. But the honest answer is yes, I still enjoy it — actively and genuinely — and here are the specific things I keep coming back to.
Up before six, which is not a hardship when the island looks like this at that hour. Drive up to the viewpoint above Nai Harn — not the main parking area, the small pull-off further up the road that most people drive past — and watch the light come onto the bay from the east. The water is flat in the morning and the view south toward Phromthep Cape, with the light building, is one I have seen hundreds of times and never once thought was ordinary.
Then down to the market near Phuket Town for breakfast. Hokkien noodles from the stall that has been in the same spot since before I arrived. Black coffee from the shop next door. The market at 7am is a specific version of Phuket that tourists rarely see and that I consider one of the island’s genuine daily pleasures.
The James Bond Sunset Experience. Every time. Not because I run it — because it is the best day on this water that I know of, and I know this water well. The afternoon in the sea caves of Phang Nga Bay, the hong experience, the sunset over the karst islands, dinner on the boat, the bioluminescence after dark. I have done versions of this trip for twenty years and I have never come back from one without feeling like I have been somewhere genuinely extraordinary.
If someone is visiting Phuket for the first time and they ask me what to do, that is the trip I tell them to book before anything else.
Ya Nui. The small one below Phromthep Cape that takes five minutes to walk to from the car park and is never as crowded as the more famous beaches. The water is clear and usually calm, the snorkelling on the rocks to the right is consistently good, and the view across the channel toward the outer islands in the late afternoon is everything a Phuket afternoon should be.
The north end of the beach at Nai harn, in the morning, before most people arrive. The lake behind it, for a swim when the sea is rough. The Yacht Club for a quiet lunch on a weekday. Nai Harn is the beach that makes me feel most at home on this island.
South from Rawai Beach along the coast road, past the viewpoints, up to Phromthep, then back north through the hills via Kata and down to the coast. Do this in the late afternoon, before sunset, when the light is low and the landscape is at its best. Stop at any viewpoint that looks interesting. The hills in the south of the island, covered in rubber trees with the sea visible in every gap, are a version of Phuket that photographs beautifully and that most visitors who stay in the north of the island never see.
If you want to find your own version of dining, the method is simple. Drive away from the tourist beach areas, look for a restaurant with plastic tables and a handwritten menu and Thai people eating at it, and order whatever the person at the next table is having. You will eat better than anything with a QR code and an Instagram page.
Being on the water early. The crossing to Phi Phi before 8am, or out into Phang Nga Bay at first light, when the sea is flat and the sky is doing something interesting and there is no one else around. This is the thing I moved here for, and it is the thing that I am still here for two decades later.
The Andaman Sea in the early morning, in good conditions, is one of the genuinely beautiful things I have experienced in this life. I am aware that is an extravagant statement. I have been making it for twenty years and I have yet to find a reason to qualify it.
I started Phuket Sail Tours because I wanted to share this with people. Not a curated experience or a polished product, but the actual thing — the sea, the islands, the hidden lagoons, the fish, the light. The version of Phuket that I fell in love with and have never found a reason to leave.
If you are coming to Phuket, I would love to show it to you. Not as a tourist attraction but as a place. There is a difference, and I think you will feel it.
— Captain Mark
Exceptional, uncrowded island day trips from Phuket. Family-owned and operated since 2004.
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