outside phuket

A huge frog and I/ staring at each other,/ neither of us moves.
Robert Hass, After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa

We drove under trees of cashew, rubber and coconut and to the tops of hills to views of unfolding white beaches and brilliant blue sea. And although they’re as picture-perfect as a clichéd postcard, there’s a lot more to Phuket than the sea. We made our way through the island’s famed beaches – Patong, Karon and Kata – and drove on to the old quarter of Phuket town. It was lunchtime by the time we got there, and we explored narrow lanes bursting with weathered Sino-Portuguese architecture. Everything seemed a little clearer in the throbbing afternoon light – the traffic of tuk-tuks and two-wheelers, the old buildings inhabited but silent and the electric cables above us, crossing the streets and blending in with the complex urban landscape. This architecture was more a verb than a noun.

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