Even though Thailand is one of the most visited places in Southeast Asia, it has very limited information on how to actually get to various tourist attractions cheaply. The Big Buddha in the Nakkered Hills is one such attraction.
After jumbling together info from other blogs and with one stroke of good luck, we managed to hike to the Big Buddha from Kata Beach easily.
This post compiles all that info I found into a complete guide on how to get to the Big Buddha from Karon or Kata Beach cheaply!
But first…
Getting to Kata Beach or Karon Beach
Depending where you’re staying, your journey to Karon or Kata will vary. We chose Phuket Town as our base for the sake of cheapness and ease of transport, but you can get there from Patong or Chalong easily as well.
From Phuket Town to Kata or Karon
Find Ranong Street, and grab the public songthaew from there to Karon and Kata (40 THB). The ride takes between 40 and 60 minutes one way. You can see the face of the Big Buddha from the road, but don’t worry as you drive past it… you circle around and eventually climb from the backside of the hill.
The songthaew will drive past Karon Beach first. Get off at the very far (southern) end of Karon Beach or even one street past it to be in the prime spot to start the hike.
From Patong to Kata or Karon
Your most direct option is to grab a taxi. From what I can find, no public buses run from beach to beach; you have to ride to Phuket Town from Patong on a public songthaew (30 THB) and then grab another from Phuket Town to Karon-Kata (40 THB).
The latter is a much cheaper option but will take you more than 2 hours in total while a taxi would take about 15-20 minutes.
From Chalong to Kata or Karon
The public songthaew bus drives right along the main highway in Chalong. Stand along the side and simply flag it down. Don’t worry about not being at an official bus stop… I’m convinced bus stops barely exist and I know from experience that these songthaews will screech to a stop and swerve across three lanes of traffic to pick someone up.
Same as above, the ride will cost 40 THB and you can get off at the very end of Karon Beach to start the hike.
Hiking from Karon or Kata Beach to the Big Buddha
If you want to make your life a breeze, download the app AllTrails. We used it during our National Park road trip in the summer of 2018 and it was the most fantastic thing. It tracks your location even with data turned off, and shows you the entire route so you can see if you’ve gone off track.
This particular hike to the Big Buddha is in there. Once you get to trailhead, signs will direct you the rest of the way, but it’s helpful for getting your bearings and getting to that starting point.
If you don’t want to get AllTrails, I will defer you to this post from another blogger about getting to the start of the trail.
All the information I could find made it sound like it’s hard to find and follow the trail to the top in some places. As of 2020, that is not the case.
Signs that say “Big Buddha — Walk” show the path clearly and are placed at exactly the points where you might otherwise go wrong (the tiny white square on the image below is one such sign).
The only piece to be aware of is at a junction where a big sign points one way to BIG BUDDHA, and a small sign points the other. The small sign is the one you want — if you look closely you’ll see it says “Big Buddha — Walk”.
The big sign is for cars and motorbikes and you’ll notice the road is nicely paved.
You’ll be going right, up a less nice stretch of road. Look to your left as you go and you’ll see another small sign in the jungle foliage denoting the walk… this is the trailhead.
From here, you’ll be walking on a narrow dirt track most of the way up.
There’s one other spot near a small house that looks like you could go right or left. You’ll want to go left, but again, a small sign leads the way!
Eventually, you reach the main road that all the cars take up.
Once you hit that, you’re almost there! Just follow it to the right and soon you’ll see the back of Big Buddha’s head.
How hard is the hike to the Big Buddha of Phuket?
The hike up is strenuous. At times, the gradient is 40% and you climb over 1,200 feet to the top.
At the steepest parts, ropes have been tied between the trees to help you pull yourself up. This is the best picture I got of them:
The trail itself is cleared but slightly rough. I wore Birkenstock sandals and J wore canvas shoes and we were fine, but hiking boots or tennis shoes would’ve given us firmer footing.
Add to this that it was 84 degrees Farenheit by 8:30 am and you’ll be sweating buckets. We drank four liters of water between us before we reached the Buddha, so make sure you bring enough water with you (peep how sweaty we are below lol).
The hike down is fine, just be careful with your footing on the rough parts of the trail and use the ropes for balance on the steep bit.
Besides seeing the Big Buddha for free, you know that when you get down you can spend the rest of the day on the beach!
