Just north of the lights and noise of Patong lies Kamala Beach, a quieter stretch of sand with a more relaxed feel. This well-enclosed bay and fishing village surrounded by forested hills is one of the most beautiful places in Phuket. With its quieter pace, over the last few years, Kamala has become a favoured spot for retirees and other longer-term visitors staying in small hotels, villas and apartment rentals nestled around the village.
If you are ready for a beach massage just look around, at almost every beach you will find the beach massage ladies. Usually fat women from the north of Thailand who came to Phuket Island to earn some money, they do quite a good job sometimes the rough way.
Hair braiding is definitely something the kids should try. You can find lots of ladies at the beach area who can do this for you. You get to choose 3 different colour beads. Settle on a good price and they will do it for you in 30 mins.
The main source of lunch towards the south end of Kamala beach is the many beachfront hotels, that serve mainly Thai and International dishes. At the north end there’s an area with many hawker stalls selling all kinds of Thai delights from different areas of the country. You’ll usually find chicken satay, spicy Thai salads, Phad Thai and Thai curries amongst other dishes and all kinds of sweet deserts.
Phuket French crepes or pancakes or whichever name you prefer is a tasty food entrée you can find on the many beach roadsides in Phuket. Depending upon the location, you will spend about thirty Baht for this tasty Thai pancake; these roadside stands do very good business behind the beach making multiple crepes to hungry beach tourists. If you don’t want banana you have a good choice of filings.
On 22nd July 2006, the tsunami memorial in Kamala was officially unveiled. Kamala was one of the two towns in Phuket worst hit by the December 26 2004 tsunami, the other being Patong. The memorial, which forms the centre piece of a new park in the town, is a 10-meter-high metal sculpture called Jitt Jakawan (Heart of the Universe), designed and built by Thai sculptor Udon Jiraksa.
Since we were travelling free and easy today, we decided to do a little geocaching seeing there was one near the tsunami monument. We have to thank Pirates of Ystad as without this cache, we would never have visited Kamala Beach or known about the tsunami monument here.
We stopped by a bar by the sea for a couple of ice cold Singhas in the late afternoon and enjoyed the view of the sea and the sounds of the waves lapping gently onto the shore. It did start to rain for a bit but when it cleared, beautiful double rainbows appeared in a distance. I couldn’t help but take a picture.
Tuk-tuks, the notorious three-wheeled smoke-belching variety are now extinct on Phuket. They have been replaced with small red vans with open sides. We grabbed a tuk-tuk from Kamala beach back to Patong for 400baht.
This post is one of an 5 part entry of our January 2011 trip to Thailand.
See all the places we visited on this trip below:
[...] View Point is on the top of the hill. Wayside shelter was constructed at here for seeing the v… Phuket – Kamala Beach: Just north of the lights and noise of Patong lies Kamala Beach, a quieter stretch of sand with [...]
[...] View Point is on the top of the hill. Wayside shelter was constructed at here for seeing the v… Phuket – Kamala Beach: Just north of the lights and noise of Patong lies Kamala Beach, a quieter stretch of sand with [...]
[...] View Point is on the top of the hill. Wayside shelter was constructed at here for seeing the v… Phuket – Kamala Beach: Just north of the lights and noise of Patong lies Kamala Beach, a quieter stretch of sand with [...]