Phuket Island

Tin, not tourism, built Phuket. The island was mined for centuries and the money it produced put up the Sino-Portuguese shophouses that still line Thalang Road in the old town. The other defining episode is the 1785 defence against a Burmese siege, led by two local women and commemorated by the Heroines’ Monument on the main northern junction.

Tourism arrived late, from the 1970s on the west coast, and the property market later still. The mining land behind Bang Tao was rehabilitated from the 1980s into the Laguna estate — the project that set the pattern for everything built in the north since.

They behave completely differently. The west faces the open Andaman: surf beaches, real monsoon swell from roughly May to October, and the sunsets. The east faces Phang Nga Bay, sheltered behind the headlands — mangrove, flat water all year, and every marina on the island.

It is the single most useful filter for a buyer. People who want to swim off the beach look west. People who want a boat, or calm water in low season, increasingly look east.

One main road runs north to south down the spine of the island, and traffic on it is the thing most buyers underestimate. The airport sits in the north, which means fifteen to twenty-five minutes from most Thalang addresses and forty-five to sixty from the south in the wrong part of the day.

Nothing on the island is genuinely far. But the difference between a ten-minute school run and a forty-minute one is the difference between two otherwise similar houses, and it is worth driving the route before deciding.