Phuket Weather

April becomes May - It's been mostly hot!

A long time since the last major Phuket weather blog update! That was April 19th .. since then I have been on holiday with the family around Phuket and Khao Lak. Mum and Dad visiting from England, plenty of days out and lots of relaxing, nothing too strenuous. I was back at work on May 5th with the main diving season coming to an end, have now been quite busy at Sunrise Divers working on website updates, and trying to take one step ahead of the competition! And the kids went back to school again on May 8th after a long summer break, so it's been the start of a new school year, with early mornings, homework and "go to bed!" - thus, not a lot of time for blogging!

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A quick weather chat ... it's now mid-May, so the season should be changing, we should be getting some rain and winds blowing from the west. Well, it's not really happened. Yesterday (May 12th) was wet, maybe the wettest day for weeks, but then today has been very sunny. There's hardly any wind and we really do need some rain as the big reservoir between Phuket Town and Patong is getting low.



(above) I did my morning exercise this morning at the reservoir, and loved this tree full of red flowers on the roadside.



(above) Sunset as seen from our house this very evening. The 2 photos above were originally posted on Instagram.

So, the low season is not really here yet, at least the low season weather is not here ... not a huge number of tourists either, it's really worth coming in low season to get bargains on the hotel prices and just take a risk with the weather :)

Here's a quick summary with Tweets and photos of the weather over the last few weeks .....

April 19th - lovely sunny day, maybe a bit hot for parents just arrived from England - here's the sunset at Cape Panwa that evening:



April 20th "A lovely hot sunny day in Phuket today" including a stop at Bang Rong for lunch at the floating restaurant and a walk on a new walkway through the mangroves. A brahminy kite circled above. The east coast of Phuket is way different to the touristy beaches on the west coast.

Brahminy Kite

April 21st - hot and sunny as we explored in Phang Nga, quite a long tiring day actually! Started at Wat Bang Riang which is a bit more than 90 minutes drive from our house, great views, love this place :

Parents at Wat Bang Riang

(above) Mum and Dad at Wat Bang Riang - we then headed for lunch at Tha Sai Seafood, love the views from here too:



And had a great sunset when we stopped for a little walk at Sarasin Bridge :

Sunset from Sarasin Bridge Phuket

I then got sick for a day or 2, and did not move much .. the 22nd and 23rd April were very hot days.

24th April we drove up to Khao Lak, stayed a couple of nights and weather was great. We vowed to head back the next week! I will write about the Khao Lak area soon on the Phuket Blog.

I Tweeted on the 25th "Big beautiful orange sunset this evening across the ocean at Khao Lak. Very peaceful. Now I can see why people like it here!" ... Here's sunset on the 24th:



And on the 25th - a real mixed bag of weather. We took a day trip by speedboat to Tachai island. Weather looked good, but near the island we hit heavy rain and thunder, but fortunately no rough seas. We all got very wet, but when the sun came out it was fierce and .. well, just look :

At Koh Tachai island

And here's the pool at Nangthong Bay Resort, photo taken on 26th April in the morning before we left and headed to Khao Sok National Park...



26th was hot, we first visited Sri Phang Nga national park, another place that we plan to revisit, and then headed on to the Cliff and River Resort in Khao Sok. The kids and I managed 30 minutes in the pool before the inevitable jungle rains arrived in the late afternoon - we always get some rain at Khao Sok!

With the rains came this (as seen from our balcony!) ...

Khao Sok Double Rainbow

And the next day started warm again, but as we drove back to Khao Lak, the rain fell quite hard, so we drove back home rather than 1 night in Khao Lak, that was the 27th. On the 28th, an easier day including a trip to the Expo indoor market in Phuket Town, and a lovely dinner at The Beach Bar with live music from Ali ...



April 29th and a longtail boat ride out to Bang Mud floating restaurant near Coconut Island and then to Rang Yai island for a splash in the sea. Weather, hot of course, but at Rang Yai there was always cloud covering the sun and we could see rain back on the mainland, though it never came our way.



April 30th .. back to Khao Lak for a couple of nights, to relax, check out a few waterfalls and hope for some more great sunset walks on the beach. Lovely. A proper holiday! Sunset below with our kids running on the beach on the 30th.

Khao Lak - Nangthong Beach Sunset

We did also visit a couple of tsunami memorials, which I have meant to do for years. Will write some more about that later on the Phuket blog. I think it helped our kids to understand. The police boat landed 1.2km from the sea.



Morning of May 1st. No sign of low season.



Welcome to May! And still hardly any rain except that day driving from Khao Sok and a few night time drips. We drove back to Phuket on May 2nd. To be honest I could have stayed a couple more nights in Khao Lak.

Tweet from May 2nd "Good morning from Khao Lak .. Panorama photo of our breakfast view ... pic.twitter.com/gwPBK58ACX"

And we stopped on the way home at Ton Prai waterfall .... Yes, that's me being Tarzan.

Natures Shower

Life has been a bit more normal since then ... selected Tweets :

May 3rd "Cloudy with rumbles of thunder this morning and not too hot..."

May 4th "May the 4th be with you" and "Been a really hot day ... Some morning rain but roasting later ..."



(above) Sunset at Cape Panwa, May 4th 2013

So on May 5th I was back to the dive shop, working all week until this lat Saturday (11th).

Weather on the 6th did threaten to be very wet, the photo below shows clouds building up over the hills in the evening :



But then it's been hot again since then apart from a wet Sunday 12th. Here's the sunset on the 7th:



And the sky over our house in the late afternoon, 8th May ... more blue skies :



The photo above from iPhone using the Instaweather app.

Mum and Dad flew back to sunny England on the 9th, and I met an old friend for a couple of beers ... we'd both done our divemaster courses on the island of Utila back in 1996. Not seen him since, but there's the magic of Facebook, nice to see an old face, always. We headed to the After Beach Bar, perfect spot for a beer and sunset view.



(above) Sunset from the After Beach Bar, 9th May

10th May "Another hot sunny day in Phuket ... low season is not here yet! Great diving weather... Shame there are hardly any divers here!"

11th May "Weather update - sun is out .... but I am thinking this day feels like a bit of thunder is coming later."

I was correct on the 11th, as lots of rain fell in the night and in the morning of the 12th. But today was all blue skies again!

Hey, we're up to date! Phuket weather now .... night, dark, insects chirp, will it rain tomorrow?? With low season approaching, updates to the weather blog are likely to be more frequent, since the weather changes every day, or every few days.

Goodnight and please do join me on Twitter and Instagram!


April becomes May - It's been mostly hot!  |  The Phuket Weather Blog

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