Phuket

Phuket appears in early charts as Junkceylon, a landfall on the sea route between India and the Malay ports, and its tin was traded long before it was settled in any permanent way. Chao le sea peoples fished among the islands, and Tamil, Malay, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English traders all called at the coast. The island lay under the Siamese province of Thalang, whose town stood inland in the north, not on the site of the present city.

In 1785 a Burmese force landed and besieged Thalang. Two sisters, the widow of the governor and her sister, are credited with organising the defence until the siege was lifted, and were honoured with the titles Thao Thep Kasattri and Thao Si Sunthon; their statue stands at the island's main crossroads. A second Burmese invasion in 1809–1810 left Thalang in ruins, and the centre of the island's life shifted south.

Tin made modern Phuket. From the mid-19th century Chinese labourers, mostly Hokkien from Penang and Fujian, came in large numbers to work the mines, and the merchant families who prospered built the shophouses, mansions and shrines of what is now the old town, in the Sino-Portuguese style shared with Penang and Malacca. Rubber followed. When tin prices fell in the 20th century, tourism replaced it: the west-coast beaches were developed from the 1970s, the Sarasin bridge and later the airport brought mass arrivals, and by the 1990s Phuket was Thailand's best-known resort. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck the west coast on 26 December, part of a disaster that killed about 5,300 people in Thailand, and rebuilding was rapid.

The island's distinctive culture is Peranakan, or Baba, the mix of Hokkien Chinese and local Thai and Malay life that grew out of the tin era. It shows in the shophouse architecture of the old town, in wedding costume and in the food, and it is maintained by clan associations and Chinese shrines that keep their own calendars of festivals. The largest is the Vegetarian Festival in the ninth lunar month, when devotees eat no meat, dress in white and carry the Nine Emperor Gods through the streets, and entranced mediums pierce their cheeks with skewers amid strings of firecrackers.

Buddhism shapes the wider rhythm of the year, with Wat Chalong at its centre, while Muslim communities are long established in villages such as Kamala, Rawai and much of the north, and mosques stand close to temples and shrines. The Urak Lawoi and Moken, the sea peoples, live at Rawai and on nearby islands and hold boat-floating ceremonies twice a year, though their claims to the land they occupy have often been contested.

The southern Thai dialect is quick and clipped, and Hokkien words survive in local speech and in dish names. Phuket was named a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015, a title the island takes seriously. Sport is dominated by sailing and by muay thai, with training camps that draw foreign fighters, and the international community — European, Russian, Chinese, Australian — is large enough that some neighbourhoods carry signs in several languages.

Fewer than 400,000 people are registered as living in Phuket province, and the real population is put at around 600,000: migrant workers from Myanmar staff building sites, boats and kitchens, and tens of thousands of foreign residents hold long-stay visas. Phuket City, on the east coast, is where the government offices, schools, hospitals and markets are, and where most islanders live; the west coast is the visitor side, and commuting across the hills between them fills the roads twice a day.

Tourism pays for almost everything. Hotels, restaurants, boats, diving, construction and property dominate employment, with rubber smallholdings, fishing and a little remaining agriculture inland. The pandemic years showed how narrow that base is, when the island emptied and many workers returned to their home provinces; arrivals have since recovered strongly. Rising land prices, villa building on the hillsides, water shortages in the dry season and heavy traffic on the few main roads are the issues that dominate local debate, along with the condition of the reefs.

The day starts early — markets before dawn, school runs and the first boats out of Chalong — and slows in the heat of the afternoon. Evenings belong to the night markets and to the beach for sunset, an occasion Phuket takes at its own unhurried pace.

Phuket cooks differently from the rest of Thailand. Mu hong, pork belly slowly braised with black pepper, garlic and palm sugar, is the island's emblem, and o-tao, a fried batter of taro and small oysters topped with egg and eaten with chilli sauce, is its best-known street dish. Hokkien fried noodles, thick and yellow, come with pork, prawns and squid; loba, offal and pork simmered in five-spice and served with a sharp dipping sauce, is a market staple. Breakfast is often khanom jeen, fermented rice noodles under a curry sauce with a tray of raw vegetables and pickles, or dim sum in the Chinese coffee shops of the old town.

Southern curries are hot, yellow with fresh turmeric and generous with shrimp paste. Kaeng som, a sour orange fish curry, kua kling, a dry-fried minced-meat curry, and kaeng tai pla, made with fermented fish innards, are all eaten here, usually with plain rice and a plate of raw vegetables to cool them. Muslim kitchens add roti, khao mok gai — spiced chicken rice — and massaman-style curries.

Seafood is the other constant: rock lobster, blue crab, squid and whole fish grilled over charcoal, bought by weight at Rawai and along the piers. Sweets show the Peranakan influence, among them o-aew, a jelly of banana and shaved ice served with syrup and red beans, and kanom lod chong, pandan noodles in coconut milk. Local coffee, thick and sweetened with condensed milk, is drunk in old-town kopi shops that open before sunrise.