Phuket, Thailand
Phuket Island lies 750 km south-southwest of Bangkok bordering the Andaman Sea. Coarse-grained "granites" stud the western coast of the island; limestones outcrop to the east on the coast and as islands.
| The sheer limestone cliffs of the
Phi Phi islands, 45 km southeast of Phuket Bay, rise out of a sea teeming
with exotically coloured fish. Diving and snorkelling are very popular
tourist activities here.
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| A tourist steamer arrives at the entrance of the cave on Koh Phi Phi Le. You can just see some of the bamboo poles used for climbing to the roof of the cave. | Painting of a Chinese junk of wall of the cave, said to date back to the Sung Dynasty of China. |
Phuket has long been a relatively prosperous province of Thailand thanks to tin mining and rubber plantations. Today, the price of tin is rock bottom and whereas one acre of land once cost 6,000 baht, it now costs six million. All thanks to tourism which has become the dominant industry. The only sign of tin mining now is a couple of dredgers offshore. Rubber plantations once occupied 30% of the land, but this too is declining.
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| The bark of the rubber tree is scored and the sap oozes into the cup fixed to the trunk. The sap is collected from the cup on each tree and poured into trays where it dries into sheets of white latex. | View looking north
towards Kata Noi Bay, Kata Beach and Karon Beach, all tourist centres on
Phuket. Tourism is Phuket's thriving industry. |
During October each year, Phuket celebrates its annual vegetarian festival. All participants wear white, and a very wide variety of Thai vegetarian food is on sale everywhere.
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| All taking part in Phuket's vegetarian festival must wear white. Yours truly was just too big to get into any of these garments on sale. | A wide range of cooked Thai vegetarian food is offered in the markets. |
The festival apparently has its origins in the visit of a Chinese opera company to Phuket hundreds of years ago. The performers fell ill with malaria but cured themselves by following a strict vegetarian regime for nine days in deference to two gods. The local population was so impressed that they adopted the practice, which is centred on the many Chinese-Thai style Buddhist temples.
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| Lotus flowers for the power of the heart, candles for longevity, incense for popularity and gold leaf for wealth are all offered at temple shrines. (So said our guide.) The food is subsequently distributed amongst monks and devotees. | A devotee practices divination, possibly the I Ching. Worshipping at the temple helps people to concentrate their minds on seeking the appropriate solution to a problem. |
Food is offered free to visitors at the Buddhist temples during the festival, where constant chanting and the intermittent setting off of fire crackers drive away evil spirits. The angels to whom devotees offer propitiation look pretty fearsome themselves.
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| Firecrackers are offered in reverence at the shrine, then set off at temple boundaries to drive away evil spirits. | Guardian angel carved on wooden door. Chinese Buddhist temples boast a multitude of such angels. The red-faced ones are warriors, the black-faced ones are shamans. |
We also visited the house of Khun Pracha Tantavanij, which dates from the turn of the twentieth century. His grandfather had been a Chinese general who had come to Phuket to settle and invest in the tin mining operations.
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| Portrait of Pracha's grandfather in front of which can be seen the eulogy (an engraved wooden column) sent by the Chinese emperor on his death. Pracha told us that relics like these are now rare. | Pracha at the foot of the staircase fashioned by a Chinese craftsman who built all the woodwork in the house. |
Oliver Stone used Pracha's house to make Heaven and Earth in 1992. When the film crew left, Pracha received 40,000 baht to restore the house as he wanted after the set had been removed. But then, they did make a lot of changes.
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| The fish pond in the centre of Pracha's house, open to the sky, acts as a natural air conditioner, encouraging a throughflow of air. | 'Mary', whose real name I didn't catch, spends her days making delicious cakes for Pracha's many visitors. |
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Surrounded as they are by water,
the Thai seem to live and enjoy an open life. This extends to the
ideal of temperament known as 'chai yen' or 'cool heart', taken to mean
the avoidance of extreme emotion.
Here, our steamer approaches the shore of Koh Phi Phi Don. |
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| Sea food is abundant. I can recommend the barbecued mackerel from this stall. | The splendid colours of the environment are reproduced in hand-painted wraps and T-shirts. |
For more information
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Internet services to tourists are widespread
in Phuket. So you can always keep in touch with your e-mail or simply
surf the Web. You can either visit offices like this one or find
an Internet cafe.
For full, focused details on what's available in Phuket, see Phuket Island Access, a site maintained by residents of the island, Thaiwave.com and Phuket Thailand, which provides travel information to Phuket including beaches, hotels, map, and photos. |
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