Phuket Culture | The Phuket News

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Love is in the air... not to mention the bubbles

Friday 14 February 2025 11:00 AM

Saint Valentine’s Day is traditionally a time for romance, flowers, candle-lit dinners and the whispering of sweet nothings into the shell-like ear of the object of your affections. But in Phuket there can be other distractions.

New beginnings in Rawai

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 12 January 2025 02:00 PM

As people across Phuket were readying for the New Year, Hindus on the island celebrated the grand opening of the Lord Shrimant Ganpati Bappa Davalai in Rawai, a small temple dedicated to Ganesha, one of the best-known and most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon.

Mixed Emotions: A Thai ’Burning’

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 15 September 2024 02:00 PM

Back from the Southern province of Trang, and what Thais call a ’burning’. A prosaic epithet for what is a momentous event, impressive in its time-honoured rituals, but to an outsider – a curiosity among 200 mourners – sometimes sounding an incongruous note. A farming community dependent on rubber, defiantly putting on a show that it cannot afford, paying homage to Buddhist monks, who depart laden with gifts ranging from electric fans to cloth and cash.

The tale of Lady Chan

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 24 March 2024 11:00 AM

The annual Phuket Heroines Festival concluded last Friday night (Mar 15), with Phuket Governor Sophon Suwannarat playing the traditional role of the provincial Governor in the historical drama re-enacting the victory led by Phuket’s famed Heroines over Burmese invaders in 1785.

Honouring the Gods

Phuket Life / Culture

Saturday 14 October 2023 09:00 AM

Months of preparations and weeks of cleaning will come to fruition Saturday evening (Oct 14) as devotees raise Go Teng poles high into the air so that the Jade Emperor and the Nine Emperor Gods may descend from the heavens and walk the Earth while the Phuket Vegetarian Festival for this year takes place over the following nine days.

Baba Babes!

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 20 August 2023 01:03 PM

Last week, in an explosion of colourful fabrics, a firework display of wildly colourful outfits, the grandest generation of a very fancy culture threw a party for themselves in Phuket Town, and you were not invited.

Anyone Can Drown. No one should.

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 21 August 2022 11:00 AM

World Drowning Prevention Day, declared by the United Nations in April 2021, is observed annually on July 25. This global advocacy event serves as an opportunity to highlight the tragic and profound impact of drowning on families and communities and to encourage organisations and individuals to offer life-saving solutions to prevent drowning.

Geisha Sayuki visits Phuket

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 19 September 2021 11:45 AM

Thanks to the Phuket Sandbox, the island is receiving thousands of visitors from around the world as the rest of Asia remains in lockdown for the unforeseen future. These visitors have braved numerous hurdles to get here, including mandatory hotel stays, numerous COVID tests, mandatory insurance, visas and air flights known to cancel with very little notice.

Lessons from yesteryear: How the quiet roots of Songkran can help us today

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 12 April 2020 01:00 PM

It was the biggest water festival in the world. The party lasted all night long. Every year, it attracted over 500,000 foreign tourists; to say nothing of the millions Thais who perennially returned to their hometowns in anticipation of the celebration. It brought in revenue of over B22 billion and, well, I suppose you really could say “it was the biggest show on Earth!”

All About Buddhism: From patchwork to nanoparticles: The journey of the cloth

Phuket Life / Culture

Saturday 29 February 2020 10:30 AM

I was recently asked why there are so many different colours of Buddhist robes in Thailand and Asia? It seems like a simple question, but in reality, the answers are complicated and sometimes even contradict each other.

The History of Phuket: The social fabric of early Phuket

Phuket Life / Culture

Saturday 22 February 2020 12:00 PM

Prostitution and the availability of slave women for sale meant that sex workers were never a thriving business in Phuket until later in the 19th century when thousands of single Chinese male “coolies” arrived to work in the tin mines.

All about Buddhism: Phra Siam Devadhiraj the Deva of protection for the people of Siam

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 9 February 2020 10:30 AM

Those of us who are a little older and a little more grey, have witnessed a lot of changes in how we get our news every day. Thirty years ago, it was quite common to see throngs of people reading the morning newspaper and clutching a cup of coffee as they took in the headlines of the day.

The ‘Angyee’ Chinese Riots of 1876

Phuket Life / Culture

Thursday 30 January 2020 07:00 PM

High taxation in the early1870’s placed backbreaking taxes on Phuket Tin mines. This extra tax burden on the Chinese mine owners and coolies happened to coincide with a fall in the world tin price in the mid-1870’s. With the mines so overtaxed, several became unprofitable and the mine owners laid off many workers or simply stopped paying their wages.

Musing in the Mire: The Raving Twenties, How this decade might not be so roaring

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 19 January 2020 12:00 PM

Welcome to 2020. As we enter a new decade, we’ve all no doubt received the pseudo-positive message onslaught across all media, political hacks, friends and phonies alike about it all being a time for ‘change’.

All About Buddhism: Dem’ Dry Bones

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 12 January 2020 10:00 AM

Recently, we had some events in Phuket that had me thinking more about my family’s deep American roots than about Patong Beach. You see, America’s Old South and modern-day Phuket actually have more in common than it may appear because they are two places that clutched their religious traditions tightly even as society grew more permissive in general.

Phuket History: The Tin’acious Dutch

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 22 December 2019 01:00 PM

The Dutch had originally come to the Phuket peninsula to buy pepper. But as the market in Europe for porcelain, tea and silk began to boom they concentrated more on their trade with China and Japan. The problem was that Holland, in fact Europe, had few products that China needed. But China did always want tin, which was widely used in religious ceremonies and for making bronze (rust-proof) cannons. So the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC, widely known by it’s British name the Dutch East India Company, started to focus on obtaining tin in the Malay Peninsula for its China trade. For this it began to turn to the tin mines of southwestern Siam around Phuket. The official VOC “Dagregistrar” (records book) records that the first Dutch tin-buying expedition to Phuket had been in 1639 under Captain Orlando Thibault. However two years later, after conquering Malacca in 1641, the Dutch moved more aggressively to expand their tin-buying activities up the surrounding peninsular west coast.

Holiday Miracles

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 22 December 2019 11:00 AM

It has often been said that the power of music is universal. For some reason, certain songs just have a way of staying with us and we’ve all experienced plenty of holiday songs which somehow managed to touch our souls; even though we couldn’t literally understand the words.

The Hollow Bone

Phuket Life / Culture

Saturday 14 December 2019 10:00 AM

Shamanism is an accepted way of life in Thailand that has been practiced for centuries.

Procession for the ages

Phuket Life / Culture

Tuesday 10 December 2019 10:00 AM

The royal barge procession, marking the conclusion of the royal coronation ceremony, is fast approaching, having been rescheduled from October 24 to December 12 due to water levels and currents in the Chao Phraya River, and weather conditions.

Jamie’s Phuket: Stepping into the past at the island’s museums

Phuket Life / Culture

Sunday 8 December 2019 03:00 PM

There have been large changes to Phuket in recent years, mostly in terms of infrastructure and the availability of such delights as shopping malls, resorts and huge home décor stores.

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