Visit one of the many shops offering original art works by local artists. Choose from traditional or modern Thai themes, or commission your favorite scene to be replicated in a painting or sketch. A popular trend is to have a portrait sketched or painter as a gift. A number of local artists also specialize in portraits drawn from from snap shots, meaning that you don't have to sit around for hours. Some hotels have in-house artists providing portrait services, and where you can watch the artists at work.
Ceramics Factory
At the Ceramics of Phuket produces distinctive and original ceramics made from Phuket clay, from dinner plates to lamps. Their showroom, 5 minutes outside of Phuket Town on the road to stop by ( Vichitsongkram Road ) is a great place to Kathu and pick up some lovely souvenirs. Many of their ceramics are made to order and you'll find their products on the tables and in the rooms of Phuket's top resorts and restaurants.
Batik
Batik became the local costume of Phuket, every Friday you will see the government officers, bankers, and private company staffs are wearing the batik cloths. The brilliant colors of Phuket's tropical surroundings can be captured and taken home in the form of a piece of Batik made right here on the island. Sarongs, shirts, bags, pictures and light clothing decorated with patterns evoking themes and colors from the rainforest nad sea, are available at many small stores around Patong, Rawai and Phuket Town . Made to order try Phuket Batik at Vanich Plaza along Loungpho Road , or Chai Batik and Batik House on Chaofa Road , Phuket Town.
Antique
Phuket Sino-Portuguese Style
A Century ago the capital of Phuket was a scruffy and relatively insignificant little village, far smaller than the town of Thalang in northern Phuket and of little importance to the island. With the expansion of tin mining last century in central Kathu District, laborers and their overloads started to settle in the regions and the town began to take shape.
It was a felicitous choice for the narrow river meandering through the settlement flowed out to sea in a sheltered, shallow bay – ideal for a small port. Old records mention how shallow draught boats used to sail up into the town, though it is hard to imagine such a sight when looking at what remains nowadays of the narrow, silty canal, but the port prospered as it provided an ideal outlet for ships carrying tin, while fishing – previously organized only on a small scale – began to gain commercial importance.
Today Phuket town is a bustling communications and administrative center with a haphazard but comfortable blend of old and new, paralleling the development and economic fortunes of its citizens.
While the largely agrarian, Thais preferred the rural areas of Thalang district and the Muslim Thais favored the littoral, the Sino-Thais-businessmen for the most part, settled in Phuket town where, today, over 50,000 inhabitants are of Chinese origin.
It was under the Phuket governor Praya Rasada Korsimbi, in the first couple of decades of this century, that the modern town of Phuket – indeed, the island as a whole – began to blossom. Today he is still remembered with reverence by some of the town elders while his heirs have continued in diverse ways to make their mark on the evolution of Phuket.
Little remains of 19 th century Phuket, building materials were usually natural ones, such as wood and palm thatch, which perished with passage of time. In addition, there was a tendency among those early Chinese to demolish rather than to relocate when they wanted a more modern property. And most of what was not razed went up in a flaming inferno at the beginning of the century.
Those streets in the heart of the capital named after neighboring provinces to which they once led Krabi, Phang Nga, Ranong have few single-story shop houses, complete with irregularly tiled roof and attractively painted in those familiar pastel shades of dusky ping, peppermint green and egg shell blue, found throughout Chinese inhabited Asia. The solid, double storey shop houses, which might at first glance seem antiquated, are rarely older than 50 years for they are suffering, not from age, but neglect. Those intricate decorative details in balustrades, cornices and friezes that characterize. Sino-Asian architecture are crumbling and, sadly, fading like a forgotten flower garden.
It is slightly different on the outskirts, where a number of imposing private houses, built in the Sino-Portuguese Colonial style, evoke vision of the earlier era of prosperity. But some of those too merit a face life which by now would probably be more structural than cosmetic. All these tangible reminders of Phuket's history are in danger of disappearing.
In a town existing for over 100 years, it is difficult to find any structure that dates back more than a half century. Government House, constructed over 70 years ago, has the distinction of being not only the oldest extant building but the first building in Thailand to be made out of concrete. With its 99 doors and two lone windows, it remains an impressive, airy structure reminiscent of colonial Cambodia . This likeness was not lost on the move world who recently chose it to represent a Cambodian palace in “The Killing Fields”.
Just across the tree-lined road stands the Provincial Court , a graceful, Portuguese Colonial building. Under its elegant snowy white cornice is inscribed the Thai date of its completion, 2459 or, in the Christian calendar, 1916. Thus these two civic building are said to be the oldest ones in town.
At the other end of the tire scale, interspersed among the shop houses, are a few modern buildings, functionally simple in style and devoid of unnecessary decoration. The phase of modern architectural development dates from the time when Phuket town became a provincial and all those facilities expected of such a capital hospitals, telecommunication buildings, banks, restaurants, hotels and travel agencies reflect this latter day expansion. One modern anomaly, however, is the Rasada Arcade. Small balconies, arches and dazzling white paint work set aside this complex from its more mundane neighbors.
