Busy low season

I was on Patong beach a few times last week. It was busy. Not high season busy but it certainly didn’t feel like low season. There were two rows of sun loungers along much of the beach and at one time I saw 5 speedboats pulling parasailers. I remember just a few years ago the the beach chair owners would pack their loungers away for the low season and not return to the beach until mid October.

It’s not just Patong beach either. Kata beach is also alive with tourists. There are quite a few surfers and body boarders enjoying the small waves. NaiYang beach is busy with kiteboarders. The beaches are really clean too. In previous low seasons I have bemoaned the amount of plastic garbage that washes up on the west coast beaches but it’s not there at the moment, the beaches are spotless and the sea is a pleasure to swim in. I’m not sure who’s doing the cleaning but it’s working.

Back in Patong, which is after all the main tourist area, the Jung Ceylon shopping mall is packed in the day and the little strip of restaurants in there is busy at night. On Bangla road, the main bar strip in Patong, Tiger complex was full at 3am last Saturday. I mean full, even the bars right at the back. I remember being in there last August and it being nowhere near as busy.

Dive boats are also going out full at the moment. I would normally tell people that the dive boats are less busy in low season but with fewer boats running at this time of year the ones that are running are taking advantage and cramming them in. It’s the same on the Sea Canoe day trips which are also going out full every day.We keep being told that the global down turn is stopping people from travelling and that the strength of the baht is keeping people away but that’s not what I’m seeing on the ground. May be it’s the changing demographics of the Phuket tourist? More and more tourists are coming from Asia with it’s booming economy and Australia with it’s strong currency. We are seeing lots of Koreans, Indians and Russians at the moment. In July and August we’ve had plenty of Italian and Spanish customers as we always do at this time but in general there are fewer Brits, Europeans and Americans.

Phi Phi island is also full, we can’t book rooms in hotels at the moment, we’ve heard of backpackers sleeping on the beach.

The excellent weather for the first three weeks of the month have made Phuket feel like it’s still the main tourist season to me. Tourists arriving at the start of August have had bargain hotel deals and high season weather, they were lucky. The weather has changed now though, it’s been raining more or less continuously since Wednesday with flash flooding throughout Phuket. Tourists who arrived this week will not be so happy with their timing (apart from some of the Middle Eastern tourists who like the novelty of rain).

Phuket truly now feels like a year round destination. The weekends are even busier with Thai tourists coming in from off the island and expats from KL, Hong Kong and Singapore popping over for a short break.