All guides

The guides hub is a library of practical, essential-reading articles — not a directory of human tour guides for hire — built around the questions that actually trip up first-time visitors to Phuket. Some of it is pure logistics: how far in advance to book Maya Bay and Phi Phi given entry quotas, what the current Thailand visa exemption covers and how to check it against your own passport, how scooter rental and the international driving permit requirement fit together, and whether Krabi or Khao Sok makes more sense as a mainland add-on given how much time you have.

A recurring theme across several guides is correcting assumptions travellers bring with them: a jet-ski rental almost always comes with a damage-claim risk worth photographing your way out of before you ride; tuk-tuks quoting 500-600 baht for a short hop are testing what a tourist will pay rather than quoting a fair rate, and Grab or a metered taxi is nearly always cheaper; and red flags on west-coast beaches during monsoon season mark genuinely dangerous rip currents, not an overcautious formality — drowning is the leading cause of tourist deaths on the island, ahead of anything crime-related.

Other guides are more experiential: a proper street-food route through Phuket Old Town and the Sunday night market, a breakdown of ethical elephant sanctuaries versus the riding camps still worth avoiding, a PADI Open Water course walkthrough for first-time divers, and a guide to the Vegetarian Festival's street processions for travellers whose trip happens to land in late September or October. Seasonal guides cover the dry-versus-monsoon split in detail, the Similan Islands' closure window, Songkran's water-fight chaos in April, and Loy Krathong's lantern-lit evenings in November.

There are also straightforward comparison and safety guides: Phuket versus Krabi, Phi Phi versus the Similans, speedboat versus longtail boat for an island crossing, where to stay across the island's regions, realistic daily budgets in baht and dollars without invented figures, and a dedicated rundown of the scams — jet-skis, tuk-tuks, gem shops — worth knowing about in advance. The unifying idea across all of them is that they're written to be read before you land, not while standing confused at a pier counter or a scooter-rental desk — practical enough to change a booking decision, honest enough to say when a plan doesn't fit your trip.