Thailand – Phuket

As I started getting into researching the best beach for our family to stay at while we’re in Thailand, I found myself getting routed to a large amount of information on Phuket.  My focus on more first hand sources, i.e blogs, seems to be paying off in much more relevant and personal information.

The We Love Phuket blog is really good! Apparently, there’s a fella named Jaime who has been living there for 9 years with his wife and family. It has great out of the way and less commercialized recommendations for accommodations, food and attractions. I need to spend some time reading through all this in-depth first-hand information.

I have to give kudos to the folks who came up with the name Phuket Gazette. Here there are classified ads for houses/condos for rent. I found a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom place for about $400/month. I don’t know about the neighborhood, etc., but we’re definitely in the pricepoint sweet spot!

Thailand – Beaches

It’s about time that I got around to writing about the famous beaches of Thailand.  I’m in search of that legendary beach cabana that is located on crystal clear blue waters and is only steps from the beach.  Did I mention I was looking to do this for a fraction of what comparable resorts in other parts of the world cost?  I’m not sure if such places still exist, but it does seem like a worthy dream to pursue.

There appears to be an abundance of different beach communities all with a unique flavor.  This site has a good roundup, plus some very helpful links about visiting Thailand. Here is very good map of the main tourist areas of Thailand.

The first place that caught my eye was the island of Koh Hong, which is about 1 hour north or Karabi.

Searching for good, not upscale family travel

In order to provide some semblance of structure to my travel research, I’ve decided to research travel in the areas in parallel with the current agenda.  It’s January 19th and I’ve still not posted anything about Thailand’s famous beaches.  I’m not sure how the month got away from me, but I can  pretty much guarantee that I won’t let a similar thing happen on the actual trip.

I think it’s obvious that we’re going to try to avoid the drunken insanity that defines much of the commonly held view of the Thailand beaches.  I haven’t yet found a good way search the web for travel information that applies to families, and not the previously referenced inebriated masses.  By entering the word “family” in the search terms I’ve found that you tend to get upscale, wholly controlled experiences.  Isn’t there some sort of happy medium?   When my wife and I visited Europe on our honeymoon in the mid 90′s before the web had evolved, we had a similar experience with guidebooks.  What we learned is that we had to show up at the local visitor’s station and ask for the right kind of reasonably priced accommodations.  That was a start, but we didn’t find the right kind of matches until we started using the work “quiet.”  Somehow, that seemed to be the magic word for finding unique accommodations that were just slightly off the beaten path.  Surely there must be a similar web term…

Looks like I should prepare for doing some non-traditional web-based research to ferret out this information.  My hope is that this site will evolve into something of a forum where first person research can be found and shared.

Wat Pra That Doi Suthep – Naga Stairs

Wat Pra That Doi Suthep – naga stairs

Originally uploaded by Tiger Palace

Thailand Poll