Phuket City - Phuket Town

Practically all of this old Sino - Portuguese style villas in Phuket have been built by rich Chinese who made a fortune with tin production and trading.

Along the main roads are several Phuket guesthouse and the well known On-On Hotel where they did some shooting of the "The Beach" movie, but the hotel itself is real rotten.

There are plenty of other Phuket hotels but the real interesting is

to get some insight into history and go shopping. The biggest Phuket English newspaper, called Phuket Gazette is also produced in the city.

Phuket Patong is a ride between 30 minutes and one hour, don't use the notorious Tuk Tuk, they will cheat you by any means, this Tuk Tuk stuff is a mafia like gang who are after the tourist considering them as their pray. Since years this mafia group block any attempts for creating a good public transport service on Phuket Island to get the tourist into their Tuk Tuk and milk them.

Have a look for our gallery of beautiful Phuket photos. This Phuket pictures are a good blend to get a visual idea of the town.

Patong on the other side of the island is somehow different. At Patong everything is dedicated to tourists by any means. Phuket is probably the island with the biggest
accommodation density in the whole world, they beat even Singapore. Almost all good beaches are on the west coast of the island with all kind of bungalow, cottages, hotels, beach resorts and other accommodations.

In the city most of the cheap apartments can be found, prices are from about Baht 4000,- upwards. The cheap apartments only have a fan, air-conditioned apartments start at around Baht 7000,- per month.

But all this cheap places are usually quite rotten and noisy. At Phuket town and elsewhere on the island you can rent cars and small motorbikes with 120cc for about Baht 150,- per day and cars starting at about Baht 600,- per day. The best source for a motorbike and a car is Pure Car Rental at down town, they have good cars  and bikes, are at the lower end of the price range and very important, they wont cheat you. 

Down town area is also a good place to get some new glasses for about half the price they charge you in Europe or US. You could have a look in one of the shopping centers first buy sunglasses with a frame you like, about Baht 150,-, bring this frame with you to the optician and have them fix the glasses into, they are fully equipped to do the right measurements. A excellent optician at  Ratsada Rd. in downtown Phuket is Washington optical, they are very reliable and wont cheat you. Since there are 2 Washington optical just beside each other, take the one with the more modern front, they are also ok for Phuket shopping watches.

Nightlife in town is second just behind Patong but less visible.

In the last few years Phuket became a center for the health tourism in Thailand, only Bangkok and Pattaya are bigger. They do any health care plus dental and cosmetic or plastic surgery. There is also one of the top clinic in the world for conversion from male to female and vice versa. The best hospital is the International Hospital in Phuket City, they also do dental, in any case it be useful if you have some kind of problems to plan a trip to Phuket and have it fixed. The prices in Thailand are much lower and even including the airfare for travel and the Phuket hotel it will still be much cheaper to have it done in Phuket or elsewhere in Thailand.

- Phuket has,

beside of sun, sea, beach and great scenery another face. Known history started more or less in the beginning of the 11th century, the first people at what is now known as Phuket were the sea gypsies or today's Moken in Thai language and Salon in Myanmar or Burma, they are the same. They also have been named Negrito's. It could be that they are the indigenous people of South East Asia.

Since there are no written records of the Phuket history before about the 15 century history of the indigenous people of the South East Asia is known only via legends from the older to next generation, some of this legends you can find here.

The first known name of the island was Junk Ceylon, this name was written on Portuguese sea navigation maps. One earlier trace of Junk Ceylon is in a book written in 157 AD. by Greek Claudius Ptolemy. He stated that on traveling to the Malay peninsula, a island with the name Junk Ceylon will be on the way. The geographical coordinates of Junk Ceylon was given as between the latitudes of 6 N and 8 N which is also the position of the island. Junk Ceylon with its sheltered bays offered a excellent resting and restocking facility plus protection against bad weather.

It also became also known as Thalang which is the area between airport and the city of today. The Mon people from southern Myanmar around Bago and Thaton were also known as Thalangs, actually there was a continuous interaction over time due to the proximity