Monkey Hill Phuket, Thailand – What to Know Before You Go
Monkey Hill is one of the best places to see monkeys in Phuket, Thailand. Located at the back of Old Town Phuket, Monkey Hill is a hill covered in TV towers and, of course, Monkeys!
On a recent trip to Phuket, I visited Monkey Hill for the first time. However, I should have read up on the experience in advance, as I made a few mistakes along the way, which I’ll help you avoid in this guide.
How to Get to Monkey Hill
Monkey Hill is located just outside of Old Town Phuket. If you’re staying in the Old Town, you can walk to the entrance.
📍 Monkey Hill Address: Ratsada, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000.
However, if you’re coming from nearby towns such as Patong or Kata, you’ll want to take a bus or a taxi. The bus will drop you off at Phuket Town Bus Terminal 1, it’s then a 10-minute walk to Monkey Hill.
There are no signs for Monkey Hill on the roads or paths. As such I suggest downloading a Google Map of the area in advance.
Hiking Monkey Hill
The entrance of Monkey Hill is marked with a large pink sign with two golden monkeys on top. There is no fee to enter Monkey Hill, but the gates are only open from 7:00am to 10:00pm.
At the base of Monkey Hill, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers offer to drive you to the top for a fee, and locals sell nuts and bananas to feed the monkeys.
This is the last place you can buy food to feed the monkeys, so if you’d like to feed them, buy your food here. It’s also the last place you can pick up water.
Monkey Hill is a 3.5km hike with a steep incline. As you walk up Monkey Hill, markers on the pavement will highlight how far you’ve travelled. However, you don’t need to go to the top to see monkeys.
Instead, most of the monkeys are at the 2.5km mark, which is known as ‘Monkey Territory’. You’ll know when you’ve arrived here because there’s a large sign informing you of some basic rules.
The monkeys on Monkey Hill are wild, but years of human interaction can make them rather aggressive.
From ‘Monkey Territory,’ you can decide whether to hike the additional 1km to the viewpoint. This 1km has the steepest incline, but in my opinion, the views make this last push worthwhile.
There’s a severe lack of shade on this last 1km, which combined with the humidity, can make things difficult. For this reason, I highly recommend going to Monkey Hill early in the morning. I made the mistake of going around lunchtime when the sun was at its hottest, and it was a big mistake.
Thank you. Your experience helps us a lot.
A great review. Looking forward to visiting. Some good information thanks 🙂
Great information! Thank you for the informative review. We look forward to our visit in March. This is very helpful.
I just visited Monkey Hill yesterday and would like to add one important thing. As fun as it is to feed the monkeys and it’s true there are fruit vendors at the base of the hill, it’s technically a tourist trap as there are many signs that warn not to feed the monkeys as this is what causes them to act aggressively (one tried to steal my bag when he noticed me taking a banana out of it a moment before). I’d recommend feeding them only near the fruit vendor or when you spot a lone monkey. Have fun and stay safe!
I just want to clear up my first comment at the end auto correct took over and filled in the word “Nude” I was goin for “Nice” panoramic pic/video not NUDE 🤣🤣
Auto correct wins again! Got me good Fkr tsk tsk tsk. Trust AI they say 🤦
I just got back from Monkey Hill. Pretty neat experience for a 1st time travler who came from Canada. Where in Alberta we have some wild life, bears, deer,(TONS of deer) typical run of the mill wildlife. But my home province of PEI, well all I’ve ever seen for wildlife back home was Skunks and the rare squirrel lol Monkies were always of great interest to me. So saying that, it was pretty frigging cool to be so close to them. It would definitely be complete chaos if one ever got aggressive and ya kicked it or something. Any of them close by would 100% come to jump in on the action. So one piece of advice I would add to this post is try not to show them how much food you have with you for them. I had several small bags of bananas and carrots. As soon as I got there one monkey, a lone soldier, came up and I intended to offer him 1 banana at a time. He had zero patience and grabbed the whole bag and took off…. lesson learned I thought. So as I walked up the trail/road to the actual area where the monkies are, (a local told me there are roughly 2000 on the hill) I had 3 or 4 small bags of fruit, and carrots left. Some monkies were patient and I got to offer one or two items at a time. Then one bigger one of the group came up n tried to grab the whole bag like the previous monkey, so I tried to resist and pulled back…. Nothing terrible happened because I let go but for a flash moment I felt the tension rising from him. And like I said earlier, these MF’s will stick with thier own and gang up on a guy in flash!!! So I let go of the bag obviously! And that’s how it goes lol Oh yeah, if they hear a zipper all eyes are on you and they’ll start storming in towards you lol
They know what’s up! Over all they’re pretty tame and easy to chill with. It would’ve been sooo col to put one but in the end they are wild animals of course and not down for any human contact except for taking food from your hands. I did actually have one nice monkey who took the fruit from the palm of hand which was cool enough. He did hiss ever so slightly tho, but it was fine. Know your boundaries as they say and practice discernment. Thanks for the post here and all the info provided here is spot on! It’s long ways up and it’s humid AF and I was a sweaty mess by the time I reached the top to get a nude panoramic pic/video of part of Phuket. I think now I’ll go check out Tiger Kingdom 😁