INSIDE - Phuket Views

The word ‘farang’ gets banded around quite freely in Phuket and regardless of which particular interpretation you wish to accept, it is always used to describe foreigners and non-Thai people.

I am getting rather frustrated looking for the reason why there is so much segregation on this island. Since I arrived, I have, without success, been searching for ‘mixed’ groups or clubs.

There is probably no finer word than ‘summer’ to an English youth. For one thing, the official advent of the season meant a vain hope that the grey clouds would perhaps part to reveal the mythical and beautiful golden sun.

My parents have just arrived in Phuket for a month-long holiday and their visit has inadvertently made me realise just how fortunate I am to be able to call the island of Phuket my home.

I retired early, but soon found life to be insufferably boring. So I headed overseas to become a volunteer and eventually found myself in Thailand working for various aid organisations.

Hello my name is Sid but some call me Seamy Sid and I’d like to tell you about my Phuket. The Phuket you don’t read about in the brochures, the Phuket that you see in the sois during the days, in the hotels at nights and the hospitals in the mornings.

Expat Amy looks at some ways to pass the time at the Central Intersection while waiting for those 190 second traffic lights to change:

I HAD been living in Bangkok for a year, when I met an English man who had only recently moved to Thailand. He introduced me to his lovely Thai girlfriend, and then told me they had met at the airport, in the arrivals hall, when he first stepped off the plane.

IF you were to judge western fashion by what you see while holidaying in Asia, you would have to believe that hair beads, flip flops with socks, and Red Bull tank tops are all the rage on the runways of Milan, Paris and New York. You’d think that showing dirty bra straps, that the navel was the acceptable point at which to stop buttoning shirts, and that shapeless fisherman’s pants were the height of chic.