Christmas in Phuket: What to Expect and How to Plan It

Christmas in Phuket is Christmas with the thermostat turned all the way up. No coats, no dark afternoons, no anxious watching of the weather. Instead, a warm blue day, lunch somewhere with a sea view, and a swim in the afternoon. For anyone who has ever privately wondered whether the traditional version is entirely necessary, the island makes a persuasive case. Here is what to expect and, more usefully, when to book.

What Christmas feels like here

Thailand is a Buddhist country, so Christmas is not a public holiday and the island does not shut down for it. What happens instead is that the hotels, restaurants and beach clubs make a considerable occasion of it for the visitors who have come precisely for that, while ordinary life carries on around it.

The effect is oddly relaxing. There is decoration, there are festive menus, there is music, but none of the obligation. You get the parts of Christmas you actually enjoy without the parts you tolerate.

The weather, which is the whole point

December sits in the middle of Phuket’s dry season, and it is the island at its most reliable: clear skies, calm seas, long bright days and the lowest humidity of the year. This is why the festive period is peak season on the Andaman coast, and why rates are at their highest.

It is also why it works. A Christmas holiday that depends on the weather is a gamble in most of the world. Here it is close to a certainty.

Book earlier than you think

This is the practical advice that matters more than any other. The festive fortnight is the most heavily booked period of the Phuket year, and the best villas, the best tables and the best rooms are taken months in advance. Many properties operate minimum stays across the period and set their festive dining well ahead.

If you are considering Christmas here, treat September as the sensible deadline and earlier as better. Arriving at the decision in November means choosing from what is left.

Christmas Day itself

There are broadly two approaches. The first is to do it properly and publicly: a long festive lunch or dinner somewhere with a view, which is how most of the island’s restaurants and resorts mark the day, often with live music and a menu that nods to tradition while making concessions to the heat.

The second is to do it privately: a villa, your own table, a chef if you want one, and nobody else’s schedule to keep. For families in particular, this tends to be the winner, since children can swim between courses and nobody has to be anywhere.

Travelling with family

The festive period is when Phuket sees its highest proportion of multi-generational groups, and the island handles them well. The practical considerations are the ones you would expect: enough space that everyone is not on top of each other, a pool that the children can use safely, dining that suits both a grandparent and a six-year-old, and somewhere for the adults once the small people are asleep.

Christmas at Kata Rocks

We mark the season on the cliffs above Kata Beach, with festive dining at our oceanfront restaurant and a Christmas Day celebration by the infinity pool, with the Andaman Sea below and the weather doing what December in Phuket reliably does.

Our oceanfront villas suit families and couples alike across the period, and our festive offers are worth looking at early. The festive fortnight books out well ahead, so the earlier the better.