Calm In A Wild Place: Holiday Inn Express Phuket Patong Beach Central Review

Rating: 3/5 (Pricey for what it is in the high season. Also Patong is insane so proceed with caution. But overall a fine stay.)

Price Paid: $150 per night (booked with Chase IHG Premier Card, which earns 26x on qualifying IHG hotel stays, which is pretty solid for a hotel card).

Introduction

For the last leg of my Southeast Asia trip, I chose to swing up to Phuket from Singapore. This was mostly because I found a really great Finnair business class flight from Phuket to JFK via Helsinki for just 85k Alaska Air points. But I also hadn’t been to Phuket for over a decade and wanted to check it out. However, I did make the critical mistake of overlooking a lot of the negative commentary on Patong beach online. This is one of the times where the reputation you read on the internet is completely accurate. In a bad way.

However, I mostly just wanted a place to stay that was cheap-ish and could be a jumping off point for my full-day tour to see the bioluminescent plankton in Phang Nha bay. I was here in late February, which is probably the absolute most expensive time to visit Thailand in general, so even this hotel was pricing out at $150 per night, which is pretty insane for Thailand for a relatively low-end hotel like this one. In off-peak season, this hotel can be booked for around $50 per night.

Anyways, in this post you’ll find:

1. Introduction
2. Getting to the Hotel & Check – In
3. The Room
4. Property Tour & Amenities
5. Patong is Crazy & Things to Do Nearby
6. Conclusion

Getting to the Hotel & Check – In

If visiting Thailand, or Southeast Asia in general, Grab will be your go-to app for getting around. This hotel was actually quite far from the airport – it took around an hour drive to get to Patong Beach with some traffic. Without traffic it should be around 30-40 minutes, but still not a short ride and it’s on windy roads. Given I was only staying for two nights, next time I would’ve opted for a hotel closer to the airport

Check-in was fairly quick. The hotel has a nice open-air lobby.

The hotel layout gives motel vibes, but the room itself is quite nice. I specifically requested a higher floor just given I was watching a documentary about the tsunami before my trip and this would quell my (irrational?) fear.

The Room

Also, most rooms come equipped with their own balcony. The view was just of the pool and hotel with some mountains in the background but was definitely still better than no balcony at all:

Property Tour & Amenities

The property has a bunch of room blocks surrounding a central pool. It’s definitely showing its age, but has a funky motel charm to it.

Here was the view of the pool from my room balcony:

As is standard with the Holiday Inn brand, there’s a complimentary breakfast included in your stay.

I’m not a huge fan of buffets in general because I’ll overeat because it’s free, but this one was actually decently nice for a budget hotel. I only ate here on my final day before heading to the airport, otherwise I ate breakfast at cafes nearby, of which there were a lot of options within walking distance and were very good.

Patong is Crazy & Things to Do Nearby

Now on to the fun part. Staying in Patong Beach is not relaxing whatsoever. If you’re looking for alcohol, partying, and other hedonistic activities, Patong Beach is your place. If you’re looking to relax, I’d avoid here like the plague.

I can’t post pictures of nearby Bangla road because google will likely flag my website and de-index me, but you probably get the picture. It was honestly crazy, probably because I wasn’t really expecting it for a Thai beach town.

The beach in the morning was really nice and peaceful though, but gets rowdier (and dirtier) later in the day:

My main activity while here was a full day boat tour of nearby islands (James bond island, etc) and seeing Bioluminescent plankton at night, which was really cool (more to come in a future post).

Conclusion

All in all, the Holiday Inn Express Phuket at Patong Beach was a decent stay. I really just needed a place to crash at night for my two day stay in Thailand. It was a good-enough property that was clean and had big rooms. However, next time I’d avoid Patong in general unless you’re going just to party.