Natai Garden Retreat

Comfortable budget accommodation near Natai Beach, Phang Nga

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Category: Travel Tips

What is the Best Month to Visit Phang Nga?

Travel Tips

Most people will say that the best month to visit Phang Nga is January, as it’s warm and mostly dry throughout the month. Maximum temperatures will be around 30 degrees C with overnight minimums about 23-24. It’s the coolest month of the year in Thailand. Most beaches will be open and safe for swimming and there will still be some water in the waterfalls (at least until the middle of the month).

However, January is the height of the tourist season, so there will be lots of people wherever you go (although far less crowded than nearby Phuket).

February is a good option too because it is as dry as January, but temperatures will start rising towards the end of the month.

March and April are the hottest months with temperatures rising to around 34 degrees C and overnight minimums about 26-27. Historical records show that rainfall in March and April should be higher than January and February, but in recent times there have several years where there has been almost no rainfall in March and April, so these two months can be somewhat unpredictable (perhaps because of climate change).

If you don’t like the heat, then March and April are not the best months for you.

May sees the start of the southwest monsoon and it can be very wet for a couple of weeks (but cooler than March/April). From this point on (through to the end of the rainy season) the Andaman coast beaches are not safe for swimming because of strong rips.

The rain then eases off a little through June, July and August and for many people this is a pleasant time of the year as temperatures drop by a couple of degrees due to the predominantly cloudy skies. They are great months for enjoying Phang Nga’s many waterfalls. Rainfall is intermittent and is mainly afternoon or overnight thunderstorms interspersed with sunny periods.

If you like the ‘green season’ and don’t need to be here during the high season, then many will say that June is the best month to visit Phang Nga in the rainy season because June has fewer big storms and longer sunny periods.

September and October are the wettest months and there may be limitations on visiting Phang Nga’s many nature attractions because of minor flooding (Phang Nga generally does not experience the major flooding that occurs in Phuket and many other regions of the country). These are the only two months when you might experience 2-3 days of non-stop rain.

November sees the rain starting to ease off about halfway through the month as the northeast monsoon brings cooler air down from the Asian sub-continent, and December is a transition month into the dry season which is usually well under way by Christmas.

The northeast monsoon is not as strong as the southwest monsoon, and it is the east coast of Thailand that experiences most of the rain from the northeast monsoon. By the time it reaches the Andaman coast there is less moisture to produce rainfall over Phang Nga.

Given that some people like it hot, some like it dry, and some like the rain, it could be said that there is no one best month to visit Phang Nga – it depends on your personal wants and needs.

Beware the Thailand Digital Arrival Card Scam

Travel Tips

Since earlier this year, the Thai government has required visitors to complete a digital arrival card (TDAC) within three days prior to arrival. This is nothing to do with the e-visa or visa on arrival – it’s simply a replacement of the paper arrival card that was used in the years before the Covid pandemic.

There are quite a few Asian countries that now require their arrival cards to be completed online prior to arrival and there is no fee involved in completing a digital arrival card because they are not e-visas or electronic travel authorisations (ETAs). The Thai government website for applying for the TDAC is https://tdac.immigration.go.th/arrival-card/#/home

However, many first-time travellers to Thailand are falling victim to scam websites that charge for a fee (usually around US$50-70) for processing the TDAC – a problem that has been experienced in other countries that have digital arrival cards. This is because when visitors search for the TDAC website using the Google search engine, the scam sites are listed as sponsored search results above the official government website.

Why does Google do this? Well, there is nothing illegal about setting up a website and offering to do something for a fee even though you can do it for free through the official site, so Google doesn’t regard them as scam sites (we do, because these people are taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge about the TDAC – they are not being honest) and of course Google makes money from the sponsored ads.

And if we were to challenge Google on the merits of placing their sponsored sites above the government site, we are sure their response would be either (a) if people scroll further down the search results they will be able to see they can do it for free, or (b) some people may prefer to have an agency arrange their TDAC if they are computer illiterate or want assistance in filling in the online form.

Okay, maybe for the second category we are being a little unkind in calling them a scam site – but we will stick with that description at least until we see one that says upfront that you can do this for free through the government site or through their website for a fee if you require assistance. The closest we have seen any site do that is some very small print on the bottom of one of the webpages saying they are not affiliated with the Thai government.

We do acknowledge that the sites listed by Google as sponsored results do actually provide a valid PDF acknowledgment with QR code which will be accepted at Immigration. But how is the average person able to differentiate between these sites and the true scam sites what will take your money and not deliver a valid TDAC. These come and go and are often accessed through links from social media platforms like Facebook and look like the other ‘pay-for-assistance’ sites that Google promotes.

The real scam sites

These sites are set up not to deliver a TDAC, but to harvest your credit or debit card information. How they work is they take you through the same application process as the Google sponsored sites, but after you’ve entered your card details you will get an ‘error message’ stating that the transaction couldn’t be processed and “please try another card”.

If you have not realised by this point that you are on a scam site and are foolish enough to enter the details of another card, you will continue to get the same ‘error message’. Meantime the card or cards for which you have entered your details are well and truly compromised and may already be being used by the scammers.

They act fast because they know as soon as you realise you’ve been scammed, you will no doubt be contacting your bank to have the cards blocked.

These sites harvesting bank card details may not appear in Google search results very often because once people realise they are scam sites, they get reported and taken down. But getting through to a real person on Google or Facebook to report a scam link can take many days. And as soon as one scam site gets taken down, the scammers launch another site under a different name to continue the scam.

So, play it safe and use only the Thai government’s official website to apply for your digital arrival card.

And don’t worry if you are travelling and can’t get through to the official site. You can still do the TDAC on arrival at kiosks before you go through Immigration. However, there are often queues at those, so that will lengthen the amount of time you spend going through Immigration.