Bali or Phuket for a Group: Houses, Seasons and Getting There

For a group, Bali and Phuket are closer than they look. Both are islands with international airports, both have private houses large enough for twelve or fourteen, and both reward the guest who stays in one place and lets the staff do the work. What separates them is the calendar, the coastline and the kind of house each island does best, and for a group those three decide the trip.

Start with the weather, because the two islands have close to opposite dry seasons. Bali is driest from about April to October and wettest from November to March, when rain tends to come in afternoon bursts. Phuket’s Andaman coast runs the other way: dry and calm from about November to April, greener and wetter from May to October, when the south-west monsoon brings swell and currents to the west-coast beaches. A July trip favours Bali, a February trip favours Phuket, and Christmas and New Year are a peak on both.

Bali’s big houses are mostly villas in the full sense, walled, staffed and built around a pool and an open living pavilion, and on our books Bali has more houses of seven bedrooms and up than any other island we cover. Seven bedrooms is the natural size for fourteen. In Pererenan, on Canggu’s quieter western edge, Ocean Palm Estate is booked whole: seven bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and terrace, a central garden and a jade-tiled lap pool with a jetted spa pool, with the estate staff there daily and the beach about five minutes away by car. Uma Santai Pererenan, nearby, is a second seven-bedroom house for fourteen, and on the cliffs at Ungasan, Surga Two is designed around a large lawn, with seven en-suite bedrooms and a private infinity pool.

Phuket’s big houses split two ways: beachfront on the long, quiet sands of Natai, over the Phang Nga line north of the airport, and hillside or clifftop on the west coast from Kamala down to Kata Noi. Villa Ananda on Natai has seven bedrooms directly on the beach; Villa Amanzi has seven above Kata Noi Beach, with a two-level terrace and a 15-metre infinity pool; and Villa Narissa, above Kamala Beach, takes up to eighteen in seven bedrooms, with a family room for children and adults.

The beaches are a real difference. Phuket’s west coast is the swimmer’s island in the dry season: long, west-facing bays with calm water from about November to April. Bali’s west coast, from Canggu to Seseh, is a surf coast of dark volcanic sand where the currents deserve respect all year, and the calm-water swimming is on the east side, at Sanur and Nusa Dua. A group that wants to swim in the sea every day leans Phuket in the dry months; a group that wants to surf, or is happy in the pool, leans Bali.

Eating in is easy on both islands, and it is how most groups this size eat most days. A cook or a private chef is common on both; what varies is whether meals are included in the rate or charged separately, and that is set house by house. At Ocean Palm Estate in Bali, for example, a private chef cooks on request and meals are charged separately. Out of the house, Canggu and Seminyak give Bali the denser restaurant scene; Phuket’s best tables are spread along the coast and through the Sino-Portuguese old town.

Getting there depends on where the group is flying from. Both islands have direct international flights from the region’s hubs, and Phuket is about an hour and a half from Bangkok by air. Once you land, the Natai houses are the nearer of the two, just north of Phuket’s airport, while the Kata Noi clifftops in the south are one of the longer runs on the island. In Bali, Pererenan is around 45 minutes from the airport by car, longer in the late-afternoon traffic, and the Bukit cliffs are a similar drive south.

So, for a group: choose Bali for a big walled house with a garden, a surf coast, the island’s food and a trip between April and October; choose Phuket for the beach at the end of the lawn, calm sea swimming and a trip between November and April. If the dates are fixed, let the season decide; if they are not, choose the house first and pick the month that suits it. Either way, the large houses are a small share of each island’s stock and the first to go for school holidays and the festive weeks.

For more Bali houses that sleep a group under one roof, see the large-group villas on The Luxury Bali, our sister site for Bali.

The estate’s own site. Ocean Palm Estate keeps its own website, with the story of the house, its rooms and the full gallery: ocean-palm.com.

Tell the concierge your dates, your numbers and whether the sea or the pool matters more, and we will shortlist the houses on whichever island suits the trip.