Phuket

Transport is the island's real problem

Phuket has no usable public transport. Songthaews run a handful of fixed routes into Phuket Town and nothing helpful between the beaches, and the taxi and tuk-tuk pricing has been a standing local grievance for decades — short trips cost multiples of what the same distance costs in Bangkok. Ride-hailing exists and its coverage and welcome vary by area.

The consequence is that a vehicle is not a convenience here, it is the price of entry, and almost every resident buys or rents one in the first month. That single fact should decide whether Phuket is your island at all: if you will not ride a scooter and do not want a car, Chiang Mai or Bangkok is a much easier life.

It also explains why the areas above matter more than they would in a city. Twenty minutes of driving is a different thing from twenty minutes on a train, and the trip you would make daily somewhere else becomes the trip you make twice a week here.

Where people work, and who you will meet

Phuket's remote-work scene is real but much thinner and more scattered than Chiang Mai's, concentrated around Rawai in the south and Cherngtalay in the north-west. There is no single district where you will meet people by accident, which is the thing Chiang Mai and Canggu do that this island does not.

The population is also older and more settled than the nomad-hub cities: long-term residents, families with children in the international schools, dive and marine businesses, and a large seasonal swing of visitors on top. You will meet fewer people than in Chiang Mai and know them longer.

What is genuinely bad here

The sea, first, because it is the one that kills people. From roughly May to October the monsoon puts strong rip currents on the west-coast beaches, drownings happen every year, and the red flags are frequently ignored by people who have swum there safely in January. Not every beach is patrolled, and the current is not visible from the sand.

The road, second. Thailand's road fatality rate is among the highest in the world, and Phuket adds hills, wet-season surfaces and a lot of inexperienced riders on rented scooters. This is the commonest way a stay here goes badly wrong, and it is largely a matter of what you ride and how.

Then cost and seasonality. Phuket is the most expensive province in Thailand and the price of nearly everything swings with the high season from November to April — accommodation quoted in September and the same unit in January are different numbers. Traffic swings with it, and so does how pleasant the west coast feels.

Healthcare here, specifically

This is the thing Phuket does unusually well. The island is an established medical-tourism destination in its own right, with large private hospitals — Bangkok Hospital Phuket is the one most foreigners name — offering international-standard care, English-speaking staff and specialists you would otherwise travel to Bangkok for.

The bill arrives immediately and in full, which is the part that catches people. Thai private hospitals expect payment or a direct-billing guarantee from an insurer before you leave, and a motorbike accident with surgery is a five-figure event. Check whether a policy direct-bills Thai hospitals rather than reimbursing you afterwards — the difference matters most on the day you cannot argue about it.

And the specific exclusion that catches people here more than anywhere: riding a motorbike without a licence valid for it, plus an International Driving Permit, voids the medical section of most travel and nomad policies. On this island that is the likeliest claim you will ever make.

The 180-day line, and what it costs you here

Thailand's tax residency threshold is 180 days in a calendar year, not the 183 most countries use and most guides copy. People plan to day 182, believe they are outside the net, and are two days inside it.

Cross it and you are a Thai tax resident. Since the 2024 change, foreign income earned from 1 January 2024 onward is taxable when you remit it into Thailand, and how that lands depends on the treaty with your home country. On an island where a year's accommodation already costs more than anywhere else in Thailand, this is the line that decides what the year actually costs.

Phuket adds nothing to the visa question itself — Thailand issues the permission and the island is where you spend it. The routes are listed below, read live from our records rather than summarised here, because summarised visa facts are how the rest of the internet gets them wrong.

What we have not sourced, and why the rows are blank

Thailand publishes no official rental series. REIC and the Bank of Thailand track new-build purchase prices per square metre rather than rents, and the listing portals that do carry rents refuse a plain automated request — DDproperty and Hipflat both returned 403 when we checked, twice.

Phuket is harder than the mainland cities on top of that, because rents here move with the season. A monthly figure quoted in June and one quoted in January are different markets for the same unit, and a single annual number hides that rather than answering it — which is precisely what the sites that fill every cell are doing.

So the rows stay blank until we have five dated submissions from people who actually pay them, each saying which month it refers to. The blank is the ask, and the box under the table is where it goes.