When we first picked Phuket as the airport to fly into, our initial plans were a bit different…fly in, 2 nights in town and then hop over to the islands. At that time (July) we booked the amazing Woo hotel for 40 quid a night. Steal. [we later ended up completely screwing it up by changing dates, realising we wanted to cancel and then lot being able to due to Agoda trickery…£65 down].
However, Phuket’s quite a big island, and the traffic in town is awful. By this time we’d started looking at doing a trip to Khao Sok National Park, to the north, so it just didn’t make any sense schlepping down into town to come back again a couple of days later.
There are loads of hotels within very easy reach of Phuket Airport. Normally you’d consider these as transit stopovers, somewhere to go before an early or late flight, however actually we’d seen Sirinat National Park to the immediate south of the airport and were intrigued. Surely 5 mins out of an airport wouldn’t be a nice place to stay?
Wrong. When I actually searched there were loads of lovely looking places within easy reach of the airport, which would mean a quick bed after landing at 10pm, and a shorter transit north. Ideal.
Central to my search was that, since the war in Ukraine, there has been a huge uptick in the number of Russian visitors to Phuket, or Moscow-on-Sea as some uncharitable commenters have dubbed it. My past experience of Russian tourists hasn’t always been terribly positive. Therefore we were aiming to places that wouldn’t attract a certain crowd. Probably the less glitzy end of the spectrum.
This definitely fitted the bill. Huge comfy room, massive pool, decent gym all set in a wooded area just off the beach. Really couldn’t grumble for £70 a night with breakfast. And crucially it wasn’t nearly glam enough for the Instagram crowd.
Prior preparation really helped here. I’d previously downloaded an AirAlo e-SIM onto my phone, which activated itself the moment we arrived. It’s good to set this up in advance as Thai regulations require ID verification, which isn’t difficult but a bit of a faff that’s easier to accomplish at home. Completely unlimited high speed internet for 20 days for £17. £2.50 off here, and works for loads of countries:
You can also buy SIMs from the airport, but the rates don’t tend to be as good…7/11 also sell SIMs that are super cheap however, obviously, you have to be here first. I like eSIMs as you don’t have to worry about taking out and losing your normal SIM- ask me how I know!
The other good thing to do is to install Grab (some like Bolt for Thailand but I didn’t get on with the app). Go through the identity verification and add an international card. That way you’re good to go the moment you step off the plane.
Grab was incredibly user friendly, they have a waiting booth straight outside the terminal…a matter of minutes and we were on our way with Mrs. Noncee. Ahem.
Whilst it certainly helped being in Row 1, and having a determined sprint to get near the front of the very slow immigration line, an hour from plane to hotel isn’t to be sniffed at.
Aside from the sight of Aeroflot’s finest craft touching down every hour or so, you’d never know this was next to an airport. Naiyang is a nice, down to earth beach frequented by Thais and tourists alike.
The whole national park thing seems a bit of a con though. There’s a checkpoint on one of the roads, and as a farang you have to pay 200THB to enter. Because we were staying ‘in’ the park we were exempt, although they still asked.
However, if you walk anywhere around it, like the forest or beach, clearly accessible, you pay… 0. And whilst cars coming along this road have to pay, there’s a whole other access literally a block over. So all of the airport taxis use that road, so the national park is actually just a huge airport parking lot really.
On our second run through, we actually walked up the the makeshift barrier and the park warden had the good grace to, entirely unnecessarily, open it for us rather than us walking round it! Thais have a good sense of fun so I’d like to think this wasn’t accidental.
We’d initially wanted 2 nights here, but the Khao Sok tour wasn’t available until the 11th, so we added an extra night here. Low expectations for these 3 days-chilling, decompression and adjusting to a 7 hour time difference as well as a 27 degree temperature difference from home.
The central part of Naiyang Beach is nothing much to write home about, but there are a few good food spots on the outer edges-the more rustic and mobile the food stall the better…Mark finally got his long desired mango sticky rice from a lovely twinkly Thai man in a food truck specialising in it. I wasn’t quite brave enough for the chicken sticks off a cart. This was early days!
My highlight was from a little cafe on the edge of the national park. Have to thank Mark for this, stopped clocks are correct twice a day and this as his time. He’d seen Google reviews. So, instead of heading into town we turned into the park.
We didn’t actually end up going to the correct place-in typical Thai style there will be two completely separate businesses directly alongside one another, with no apparent animosity towards each other. Thankfully though the ‘side’ we ended up with was the less popular one, run by a particularly smiley welcoming lady. Next door’s proprietor scowled at our mistake…correct choice.
I was in ‘trying things’ mode so ended up with above weird, but delicious drink, and another first, Thai beef with basil. Exceptionally tasty, with that peculiarly Thai quality of no discernible heat at first, until the building spice becomes too overwhelming and requires a slug of weird honey coffee to cool the fire. An absolute bargain lunch for around £6 for both of us including drinks.
All in all, Naiyang was a great little stopover which more than fulfilled its purpose. Great little gym too which allowed me to continue my current gym streak and defeat a little of the beer and bad food which was to come…
In short then, definitely don’t rule out near-airport destinations for a bit of a stopover coming to or going from, sometimes they just fit the bill.
Unless it’s Hounslow, in which case definitely don’t do the stopover.
loquitohermoso 
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