Phuket

The middle of the island is not developed, and that surprises people who only ever see its edges. Khao Phra Thaeo Wildlife Sanctuary protects Phuket's last virgin rainforest — a compact block of genuinely old forest in the north-east of the island, criss-crossed by short trails that end at the Bang Pae and Ton Sai waterfalls, both modest in the dry months and properly full after rain. The reason to come is the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, based at Bang Pae, which takes gibbons rescued from the photo-prop and pet trades and prepares them, slowly and with a low success rate that the project is honest about, for release back into this forest. Visitors watch and learn rather than handle: the whole point of the work is that these animals stop associating humans with food and safety. Around the sanctuary the interior runs to rubber smallholdings and pineapple, a working landscape that explains more about the island's economy than the beach road does.

North of the airport, the island's character changes completely. Sirinat National Park covers the shore from Nai Yang up to Mai Khao, and the beaches there are long, flat, thinly built and backed by casuarina rather than hotel blocks. Mai Khao is the island's longest beach and the quietest stretch of sand on Phuket, and between roughly November and February it is where sea turtles come ashore to nest — a protected activity, monitored by the park, and not something to seek out with a torch on a night walk. The park also protects a shallow reef offshore and a stretch of mangrove behind the beach. The trade-off for staying up here is real and worth stating plainly: the north is a long drive from the restaurants, nightlife and piers of the island's south and west, and its calm is the direct result of that distance.

A useful distinction gets blurred by the tour desks: some of the islands sold from Phuket belong to this province, and some belong to its neighbours. Racha Yai and Racha Noi, an hour or so south by boat, are the province's own — Yai with sheltered white-sand bays and clear water that make it the standard beginner-diving and snorkelling run, Noi rockier, deeper and left mostly to experienced divers. The small islands immediately off Rawai and Chalong on the south coast, reachable by longtail in minutes, are the easy half-day version of the same idea. The Similan and Surin marine parks, by contrast, lie in Phang Nga province to the north, and Phang Nga Bay itself belongs to that province too, however universally they are marketed as Phuket days out. The difference matters when the parks are closed for their off-season while the province's own islands stay open, which is exactly the situation from roughly late spring into autumn.

A range of forested hills runs the length of the island, and the road up onto it is the best way to understand Phuket's shape. The Big Buddha — a forty-five-metre white marble seated figure on Nakkerd Hill, visible across much of the southern island — stands at the end of a climbing road, and the temple complex around it is a working religious site as well as a viewpoint, so the usual covered shoulders and knees apply. The Karon viewpoint on the west coast road takes in three consecutive bays in one sweep and is the island's most photographed panorama, best in the hour before sunset and unpleasantly busy exactly then. Windmill viewpoint and Promthep Cape at the southern tip close the day out over the water, with Promthep the island's traditional sunset gathering point. None of these needs more than an hour, and stringing three together makes a decent late afternoon once the heat has come off.

Phuket was rich before it was a resort, and the source was tin. The island sat on some of the richest alluvial deposits in Southeast Asia, and Chinese labour and capital arrived through the nineteenth century to work them, building the fortunes that put the shophouses and mansions into Phuket Town and leaving a Sino-Thai population whose Peranakan culture is still the island's most distinctive inheritance. When the tin price collapsed in the twentieth century, rubber and then tourism took over — the smallholdings inland still run to rubber, tapped before dawn. The island's makeup is more varied than a beach holiday suggests: a substantial Muslim population, long established here and visible in the mosques and halal kitchens of the north and east, and the Urak Lawoi communities of Rawai and the southern capes, sea-going people with their own language whose villages predate the resort economy entirely. Understanding that makes the island read as a place with its own long history rather than an airport with beaches attached.

The island has no rail and no meaningful bus network, so the province is a road proposition: ride-hailing where it operates, taxis and tuk-tuks by prior negotiation, or your own vehicle. Distances mislead — the island is around fifty kilometres top to bottom, but a single road carries most of the north-south traffic and the coastal roads climb and twist over the headlands between one bay and the next, so an hour between beaches is normal rather than unlucky. Scooters are ubiquitous and are also how most visitors are hurt here; the licence and insurance reality behind that is set out in the getting around Thailand guide and applies with extra force on wet, steep coastal roads. If the interior and the north are on your list, a car for a day is the efficient answer, since the sanctuary trailheads and the northern beaches are exactly where shared transport thins out.