Planning a long haul trip like this can be a daunting prospect and whenever you travel to to a new destination and culture there are lots of unknowns.
Here we’ve tried to cover off those little questions you might have, or might not have even thought of yet. Hopefully you find some of these tips useful and if you’ve got any further questions please feel free to get in touch!
Arrival and Departure
To reach Khao Lak you fly into Phuket international airport. This is in the north of Phuket island, just over an hours drive south of Khao Lak. You can pre-book transfers yourself online or through a tour provider. In our case we’d booked our flights and accommodation through Kuoni and airport transfers came as part of the package so these were pre-arranged for us in a private mini bus. We were greeted on arrival and text pick-up details the day before our return journey. The minibus was lovely and clean and it was a really comfortable journey that ran like clockwork.
Cash or Card
Generally while we’re away we tend to always use credit cards to build up our airmiles. However we’d read that a lot of places in Thailand prefer cash. Generally we found this to be accurate, so you do need to make sure you have plenty of cash on you. Obviously the hotel and restaurants happily took credit cards, but most other places only took cash. We changed this before we left the UK, but we have heard you can get better rates just getting it from an ATM or changing it while you’re in Thailand. Those places that did take credit cards only tended to accept Visa and Mastercard – we found American Express was rarely accepted anywhere.
Etiquette
Thailand is known as the land of smiles, and we found this to be so true. Everyone was so lovely, welcoming and helpful to us. With this in mind, it’s only polite to behave the same, be polite and never raise your voice. Other tips we read about before visiting were to avoid touching peoples heads which are considered sacred, avoid pointing, public displays of affection and do not disrespect the royal family in any way as this is a serious offence. Also make sure to be respectful in and around temples and adhere to the correct dress code.
Food Hygiene
We’d read all sorts of different opinions on this so its hard to know what’s accurate and what isn’t. From our experience we never had any problems – no upset stomachs or any issues at all. We stuck to bottled water and asked for drinks without ice to be safe. There was a notice in our hotel saying there was a bug going around Khao Lak that they said was linked to contaminated ice, and so advised guests not to have ice outside the hotel. I don’t know if this was a one-off or a common thing, but either way we were careful with the water. We also ate at plenty of local restaurants in the town and out on our day trips and again everything always seemed to be an excellent standard, and we never had any issues.
Safety
Whenever we travel somewhere, and particularly with the kids, safety is a key issue for us. We were pleased to find Thailand to be a fantastic country, where we always felt safe and well taken care of. I think every single local we came across we found to be friendly and helpful which was so refreshing. All of the staff in the hotel, the tour guides, our servers in restaurants, the taxi drivers were all so lovely and happy to help. We never felt unsafe at all and we’d really recommend it for families.
Weather
Thailand has a very changeable climate and the south-west area basically has a dry season and a wet season which I think broadly runs from around May to October. We visited in February so found it to be very hot and dry – generally around the low 30s. Towards the end of our stay there were thunderstorms forecast but for us these were only overnight showers. The week after we left they did endure some pretty bad storms, but generally at this time of year its hot and dry and a good time to visit.
Mosquitos
Mosquitos and bugs are a consideration given some parts of Thailand do have a malaria risk as well as other various diseases (which we talk more about below). Again we’d heard mixed reports about mosquitoes - in our experience we did notice them, but never found them to be a big problem and didn’t notice too many.
To keep them at bay we tried to keep our room doors shut and our air con very cold to keep them out of the room and generally didn’t find them to be too much of a problem. We did get a couple of bites but had some bite cream with us to apply.
Then of course you need to take precautions when you’re out and about, particularly in the jungle. We used high strength mosquito repellent every day– we went with Jungle Formula but there are loads of products you can buy. We’d also heard anecdotally that Avon’s skin so soft cream also works fairly well so we did use this at night – although I don’t know if this helped or not.
Jet Lag
Travelling east remember you’re going to lose time on the way out but gain it on the way back. For example we booked a flight out at around 10am – but didn’t arrive into Phuket until around 8am the next morning as Thailand is 8 hours ahead. However on the way back, we again flew at around 9am but arrived back into Manchester later that evening as we’d gained 8 hours flying back west. All of this means your departure time can have a significant impact on your arrival time and how the jet lag impacts you.
Generally we’ve found returning from east to west is much easier to adjust – you tend to find you’re getting up earlier and going to sleep earlier for a few days, although this fits nicely with getting back into he school/work routine. However arriving can be rough, unless you can sleep well on the plane you arrive in the morning, potentially having missed a night’s sleep and so that first day can be a bit of a write off. It then takes a few days of late mornings and late nights before your body can adjust to the new time zone.
Costs
We booked a package through Kuoni for our trip, given it was our first time visiting Thailand. Now we’ve visited though we’d be comfortable booking the trip independently as it really is a very easy country to travel in. There are plenty of tour providers who operate here though – for example there was a Tui desk in the hotel if you want to book a standard UK package. General costs while you’re in Thailand are very cheap. Obviously it costs more within the hotel as you might expect. If you venture out a little more we found we could eat a meal for the 4 of us for £30-£40 depending on our order. Taxis were cheap and readily available and we came back underbudget (which makes a nice change!). Obviously the day trips you book add to the cost but we did 5 trips in all which cost around about £1,000 in total for the 4 of us, which we thought was pretty reasonable compared to some other destinations we’ve visited.
Health
There were a few things that we thought about before we visited – mainly around vaccinations. None of what we say here is health advice – we’re just passing on our experiences and what we decided to do. You should consult with your doctor and on the NHS website to see what’s best for you personally and your circumstances. For us, we checked the NHS site which directed us to travel health pro. This suggests a range of vaccinations, some of which are recommended and some of which are optional. In the end we booked a travel vaccination consultation at Superdrug to discuss it with a professional. We ended up having Hepatitis A, Tetanus and Typhoid vaccinations, plus we also opted for Rabies vaccinations. The Rabies vaccinations were classed as optional, but as we wanted to get out and about a bit, and we knew we’d be seeing monkeys and other wildlife, and as the treatment for Rabies is very time critical and hard to obtain, we wanted to take a cautious approach and ensure we were protected. All of this wasn’t cheap, costing around £1,000 pounds for the 4 of us so it is something to account for when budgeting out your trip. The other optional vaccination was Japanese Encephalitis. This is a mosquito borne disease and we were told is more prevalent if you’re near swamps, marshes and rice fields. This would have cost us nearly another £1,000 to get vaccinated against this so it was a factor in us deciding against staying out at Elephant Hills in Khao Sok National Park on the lake, and instead basing ourselves completely in Khao Lak. Ultimately we decided against this vaccination given where we were staying and the activities we’d be doing, but its an important one to consider.
