Rawai Beach – Phuket Travel Guide

Rawai Beach is not as popular with tourists as Patong or Kata beaches. It is located at the southern end of Phuket. If you are interested in Thai culture, this is the right place for you.
Rawai beach is well known for scenic locales and seafood. There are too many boats here and the shallow water is muddy and hence not suitable for swimming. The beach is filled with litter, like the nearby Chalong Bay.

With beach dirty and water muddy, the beach area is not attractive. Tourists come here mostly for seafood. All over the place there are vendors cooking fresh seafood right in front of you. The cost is much lower than in other beaches like Patong. The specialty here is crabs, prawns or fish with rice and fresh vegetables. Pakbang Food Center, located at the east side of the beach serves excellent food for reasonable prices.

The food is typically served on tables with recliners or on rattan mats laid out under shade. The vendors here know broken English and they have menu written in English as well. Beware of stray dogs and flies that are attracted by the food.

Across the sea, the island Koh Bon is visible. The beach there is entirely reserved for the guests of the Evason Phuket Resort.

There are a few other smaller islands like Koh Lone, Koh Kaew, Koh Hae and Koh Aeo, close to the Rawai Beach. You can visit these islands from Rawai beach by chartering a private boat. There are conducted tours to these islands as well from Rawai and Ao Chalong, which comes cheaper than chartered boats.

Still better is to hire a longtail boat on your own and go exploring along the islands or go fishing, snorkeling or diving. It is better to ask the boatmen loitering around the beach about the options. There are quite a few good beaches on these islands that are known more to these boatmen than anyone else.

For snorkeling enthusiasts, Promthep Cape on the west side of Rawai Beach is ideal.

How to reach

From Phuket Town, there are songthaews running to Rawai for a fare of 30 baht. The songthaew pickup point in Rawai is the east end of the beach. It runs in this route between 7.00am and 5.30pm. If you are planning to return to Phuket Town on the same day, make sure that you are boarding at least the last songthaew. If you miss, you are at the mercy of tuk-tuks, which charge 400 baht for the trip.

Getting around

Rawai Beach is too vast to be covered on foot. Scooter is the popular means of transport among tourists, which comes to around 150 to 200 baht as rentals per day. If you hire for longer duration, the rates will come down.

Things to do

As Rawai beach is not suitable for swimming, diving and snorkeling, it is used only to anchor boats. Longtail boats and speedboats are available for hire for water sports and visiting other islands. Recently, a new pier was opened for the convenience of tourists. There are many seafood stalls and restaurants on the beach area, for which Rawai is famous. Even the locals come here on weekends to enjoy the food and for a night out. The bars in the beach offer limited entertainment. For accommodation, the best is the Evason Resort. There are many middle to low budget hotels as well. You can go to Nai Harn Beach, which is nearby, for enjoying beach activities. There is a beautiful Buddhist temple in Rawai beach overlooking the lagoon. The luxury Meridian Phuket Yacht Club is located on a hill at one end of the beach. Promthep Cape offers picture-perfect sunsets on the Andaman Sea.