Bali or Thailand in December? Why I Chose Langkawi Instead

Langkawi, Kedah, at dusk. Photo via Unsplash.

On 27 November 2017, Mount Agung closed Bali's airport. I was in the Philippines with a December trip to Bali planned, watching the cancellations stack up: 445 flights and about 59,000 passengers on the first day alone, according to the airport operator.

The airport reopened two days later. Airlines kept cancelling flights into December whenever the ash drifted back, so I let Bali go and booked Phuket instead. That ticket had a layover in Kuala Lumpur. I never took the second flight.

Short answer: if you are choosing between Bali or Thailand in December, look at a third option first. Langkawi is a Malaysian island on the same Andaman Sea as Phuket, with the same dry-season timing and a fraction of the visitors. It is not empty in December and I will not pretend it is. It is a smaller, slower version of the same trip.

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The sailor who compared it to Jurassic Park

Before I left the Philippines I met an expat who was into sailing. He said one of his favourite places he had ever sailed to was an island called Langkawi. His description: "Jurassic Park on steroids."

He talked about lighter traffic, fewer people and an island that felt less worked over than most of Southeast Asia. It was also right next to Thailand, so getting there would be easy. I filed it away.

Then I started reading about Phuket at Christmas. Peak prices, peak crowds, peak partying. Nothing wrong with any of that. It was not the December I wanted.

So when the plane landed in Kuala Lumpur, I got off and stayed. Two days in the city, a flight of about an hour north, and I was standing on the island the sailor had described. He was right about the jungle.

Bali or Thailand in December: what the numbers say

Here are the three islands side by side. I have used whole-year visitor counts because they are the ones each tourism body publishes.

Two things jump out. Phuket and Langkawi are almost the same size and get almost the same December weather, but Phuket takes roughly four times the visitors. And Bali is the only one of the three in its wet season.

Bali in December: wet season, and busier than it looks

December is not Bali's peak month for foreign visitors. July is. Bali counted 572,668 foreign arrivals in December 2025 against 697,107 in July. The December squeeze comes from adding Indonesian holidaymakers on top: 2.2 million domestic trips that month.

On 29 December 2023 the toll road to Bali's airport jammed so badly that travellers got out and walked with their luggage, according to Indonesian press reports. That was one bad day, not an annual event. It still tells you what the south of the island carries at year end.

Foreign visitors also pay a tourist levy of IDR 150,000 each, in force since 14 February 2024. And the rain is real in a normal year, with January wetter still.

To be fair to Bali: this is not a normal year. Indonesia's weather agency expects the strong El Niño to push the rainy season later and make it shorter across much of the country. December 2026 may be drier there than the average suggests.

Phuket in December: the right weather, shared with everyone

Phuket gets December right on weather. The dry season is starting and the sea is calm. That is exactly why it fills up.

Phuket's airport handled 17.47 million passengers in 2025. The head of the Phuket Tourist Association puts peak-period arrivals at 60,000 to 80,000 people a day, which is an industry estimate, not an official count. All of that lands on an island barely bigger than Langkawi.

I could not find a reliable figure for how much Phuket hotel rates rise over Christmas, so I am not quoting one. For a category by category look, see our Langkawi vs Phuket comparison.

Langkawi in December: same sea, smaller everything

Langkawi took 3.22 million visitors in 2025, and roughly nine in ten were Malaysian. So December here is busy too, in a different way: the school holiday runs from 4 to 31 December 2026, and families fill the beach strip and the ferries.

One honest footnote. Per square kilometre, Langkawi takes more visitors than Bali does island-wide, because Bali is twelve times the size. What feels different on the ground is how lightly settled Langkawi is. About 94,000 people live here, a quarter of the density of Bali or Phuket, and most of the interior is still forest and rice fields.

Arrivals also fell by about 200,000 in the first half of 2026 after several international routes were suspended, according to LADA figures reported by TTG Asia. That is hard on local businesses. For a visitor it means more room.

Same Andaman dry season as Phuket, about a quarter of the visitors.

The hassle factor: what I found, and what the advisories say

This is the part that stayed with me. On that first trip nobody pushed a tour on me. Nobody offered me drugs. I never once felt I was being scammed or sold to. People were friendly, and they meant it.

That is one traveller's experience, so here is something firmer. Australia's Smartraveller rates Malaysia at its lowest advisory level and puts both Indonesia and Thailand one step higher. Those ratings are driven mostly by security risks, not by touts, so do not read them as a scam index.

The detail is more telling. The UK Foreign Office warns of "scams at tattoo parlours, nail salons and spas in Bali" and says drugs are sometimes offered as free samples in venues there. For Thailand it tells travellers not to hand over a passport as a deposit to jet-ski or motorbike rental shops, and Smartraveller flags overcharging by taxis and tuk-tuks.

Neither government mentions Langkawi at all. Their Malaysia pages are not spotless: they warn that bag-snatching and card fraud are common, mostly in the big cities, and that drink spiking happens in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. Malaysia's drug laws are also severe, with the death penalty possible for trafficking.

Kamil, Muay Thai and a friendship nearly ten years on

From Kuala Lumpur I had started messaging business owners on the island. One of them was Bambu Getaway, and that is how I met Kamil.

I trained Muay Thai there. He showed me the island and took me to local restaurants I would never have found on my own. Somewhere in there we became friends.

That was almost ten years ago. We still talk nearly every week, and Langkawi is still one of my favourite places I have ever landed in. For where to eat, start with the Langkawi food guide.

What you give up by choosing Langkawi

• Nightlife. There are beach bars and the odd party on Pantai Cenang. There is nothing on the scale of Bangla Road or the Canggu clubs.
• Direct flights. As of August 2026, Singapore was the only scheduled international route, according to LADA. New seasonal services from Guangzhou and Almaty have been announced for this winter, so check with the airline.
• Variety. Fewer restaurants, fewer beach clubs and fewer day trips than either Bali or Phuket.
• A quiet beach strip. Not in December. The school holiday crowd is real, mostly around Cenang and the cable car.

How to do Langkawi this December

• Fly through Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. Kuala Lumpur is about an hour away by air. Our how to get to Langkawi guide covers flights and ferries.
• Book around the school holiday. The first days of December are the quietest. Dates, weather and this year's El Niño forecast are in the Langkawi in December guide.
• Still want a taste of Thailand? A seasonal boat runs to Koh Lipe. See Koh Lipe from Langkawi.
• Pick your base and your length. Compare areas in where to stay in Langkawi and trip lengths in how many days you need.

Who should still pick Bali or Phuket

Pick Bali if you want surf, Ubud's temples and rice terraces, or a restaurant scene Langkawi cannot match. This year's El Niño may even hand you a drier December than usual.

Pick Phuket if you want nightlife, direct long-haul flights and day trips to Phi Phi or Phang Nga Bay. Both are great places. They are just at their most crowded right when most people can travel.

Pick Langkawi if you want December sun on the Andaman Sea without the queue. A volcano made that choice for me in 2017. I would make it on purpose now.