Beach & Islands

Phuket vs Krabi vs Koh Samui: Choosing Your Thai Beach Base

20/10/2026

Thailand’s two headline beach bases sell different holidays hiding behind the same postcard sunsets. Phuket and Krabi (the Ao Nang and Railay coast) are ninety minutes apart by ferry and priced a world away in structure: one is a full-service island with an airport, marinas, and every amenity chain; the other is a provincial cliff-coast where long-tail boats replace taxi stands. Neither is better — but one of them is wrong for any specific trip. Here is the comparison that actually matters, with Koh Samui as the third option for calendar reasons most guides skip.

Phuket: the complete-service island

Phuket has an international airport, golf course, hospitals of standards, and the widest hotel spectrum in Thailand — from 25-euro guesthouses in Old Town to 400-euro villas at Kamala. Its strengths: direct flights from most Asian capitals (and many European hubs in winter), 15+ beaches each with its own character (Kata … Read More

Beach & Islands, Family Travel

Canary Islands Winter Sun: A Family Week on a Budget

20/10/2026

The Canary Islands are Europe’s practical answer to a specific question: beach weather in February, at moderate prices, inside a familiar timezone. Four islands — Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura — stay 20–24°C while the rest of the continent shivers, and their winter prices undercut Mediterranean summer peaks by a wide margin. Families are the natural market: short flights, apartment-friendly accommodation, and beaches that keep children in the water at a time of year when beaches elsewhere are empty. The honest trick lies in choosing the right island for the trip, because the four differ more than they resemble.

Tenerife: the all-rounder

Largest and most varied — green in the north, lunar in the south, Mount Teide’s 3,718-metre volcano in the middle as Spain’s most-visited national park. Family logistics: the south’s Costa Adeje and Playa de las Américas strip concentrates family hotels and calm beaches, apartments run 70–120 euro a … Read More

Beach & Islands, Budget Travel

The Amalfi Coast on a Budget: Positano Without the Price Tag

20/10/2026

Photographs have done the Amalfi Coast a disservice: they show Positano’s tower-stacked pastel houses and imply a destination that is unaffordable by design. The coast is expensive at its three famous stages (Positano, Ravello, Amalfi-town) and honest everywhere else — guesthouse towns a bus-stop away price at a third of the postcards, and the coast’s best actual asset, the sea-level trail network, costs nothing. Here is the cheap week that keeps every view and skips the sticker shock.

Where to sleep without the Positano premium

The villages of Minori and Maiori (one town east, on the same bus and ferry lines) run 70–110 euro a night in decent guesthouses and B&Bs, with beaches that are wider than Positano’s and evenings that belong to Italian families. Atrani — the coast’s smallest town, a ten-minute-to-Amalfi walk under the cliff — prices similarly and falls silent after ten. Positano can be visited as … Read More