Entertainment at last year's Old Phuket Festival: Kids ride in a rickshaw, a young boy demonstrates his kung fu prowess and a dragon is paraded along Thalang Rd.

The 11th annual Old Phuket Festival, which this year will run from February 19 to 21, promises a feast of free entertainment along with the chance to mingle with locals who will also be celebrating the Chinese New Year.

So easy I can do it standing on my head: Performers from China spin plates at last year's Old Phuket Festival.

As in past years, streets in the old part of Phuket Town will be pedestrians-only, with street entertainers, food stalls and the chance to take a look inside some of the old town’s fascinating shop-houses.

In the Queen Sirikit Park (on Thalang Rd, next to the Toursim Authority of Thailand’s offices), ten entertainment groups from China, acrobats, Shaolin Kung Fu experts, Tibetan dancers, a mask dance from Sichuan and extracts from Chinese opera will occupy the specially erected stage. There will also be street parades of locals in traditional costume.

For those of a religious bent, buses will take people on tours of five Chinese Taoist shrines. The tour schedule begins at 1pm every day. There will also be rickshaws to ride in, and gentle boat trips on Klong Bang Yai canal, which runs under Thalang Rd and was once the city’s main trade thoroughfare.

For egotists, the Post Office will offer a special souvenir: get a stamp with your photograph on it, which can be mailed anywhere.

Franck Blanchard is the band's bassist

For romantics who enjoy jazz, French group Jazz Cool Band (JCB) will play a one-night gig in Phuket Town on February 14 – Valentine’s Day – in the Suan Chaleamprakiet 72 years Queen Sirikit Park (next to the Tourism Authority of Thailand offices on Thalang Rd).

The nine-piece band – which includes sax, clarinet, piano, bass, trombone, trumpet, bugle and drums, fronted by Jean Louis Nguyen Qui on vocals and sax – have two agendas: to promote the big-band jazz sound, and to help raise money for charity. In the case of the Phuket concert, organised by the Rotary Club of Tongkah, the funds raised will go to improving the the library at Bang Niew School in Phuket Town.

This is JCB’s first performance in Phuket, but the band are no strangers to Thailand. They played charity concerts in Bangkok in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Last year they did a tour that took in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phitsanulok and Khon Kaen. They have also released four CDs, each linked to raising charity funds.

Their repertoire includes jazz classics by musicians such as Glen Miller, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, along with favourites performed originally by crooners such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Nat King Cole.

They also sing in French, Brazilian and Chinese, and since coming to Thailand, have added some of HM the King’s jazz compositions. – sure favourites with Thai audiences – to their playlist.

In Phuket, the band will be the highlight of an evening of entertainment featuring a classic and exotic cars show and a performance by the Phuket Youth Chamber Orchestra. These, on ground level, will be free, with the gates opening at 5pm.

JCB will play on the upper floor, above the car park, from 7 to 9:30pm, with a half-hour break at 8pm. Tickets to their performance will cost 1,500 baht apiece.

For samples of JCB in performance, visit their MySpace page.

Expect dance performances, both traditional and modern, at the festival.

The Old Phuket Foundation will hold its fourth Local Life Festival on December 27, with Thalang Rd and Soi Romanee lit up, live music and huge amounts of local food and drinks. Admission to the event, which starts about 6pm, is free.

The foundation’s president, Dr Prasit Koysiripong, noted that this year the lighting of the buildings should be particularly attractive as the Phuket Town Municipality will have completed its project to put all power lines in Thalang Rd underground (the same was done in Soi Romanee a year ago).

As a result, all the power poles and swags of cables on the buildings will have been removed, allowing the Sino-Portuguese shophouses to be seen unobstructed for the first time in decades.

Food will range from local Chinese delicacies to Thai curries and Muslim specialities. The organisers have planned things so that up to 4,000 people can eat and drink their fill.

Stage performances, said Dr Prasit, will be “second to none”. They will include a band from the Yamaha Music School, a performance by local musician Tanit Prateep na Thalang and several local duos and trios.

A wide variety of food wil also be available. The organisers are catering for up to 4,000 people this year.

The performing arts will be represented with a couple of plays and a short film by Dr Marut Lekpetch, winner of a Best Short Film award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Phuket Thai Hua School, Satree Phuket School, Phuket Wittayalai School, and local municipality schools will all be putting on performances as well.

In addition, street musicians will entertain along Soi Romanee, providing a quiet getaway from the crowds expected in Thalang Rd.

“There is no entrance fee for this event,” Dr Prasit added, “though everyone is encouraged to buy food and drinks.
“The purpose is to attract people to the old town, to celebrate the coming New Year, and to allow expatriates and visitors to mingle with and meet the locals.”

For more information email Dr Prasit or call +66 (0) 8-1719-5493, 8-1552-3790, 8-1892-0618 or 8-6272-4466.

Coming back to life - the old mansion, dark for so many years, was lit up for the special dinner.

Renovation of the old Phra Pitak Chinpracha Mansion on Krabi Rd in Phuket Town is still not complete, but a group of guests and press types got a sneak preview yesterday of how it will look when it is complete and is occupied by the Blue Elephant restaurant.

Blue Elephant founders Karl and Nooror Steppe not only managed to assemble all the ingredients for a fine gourmet evening in delightful surroundings, but also spendidly garnished it with 20 would-be beauty queens – the finalists in the Miss Belgium contest.

The 20 girls are in Phuket as part of the run-up to the finals of the beauty contest some three months hence, and with Karl being Belgian (though not exactly a beauty himself) they were a perfect fit for his preview.

Thumb's up for somtam.

Along with the beauties came some 30 people from the contest organisers – managers, chaperones, make-up artists and wardrobe types – as well as a crew from the German TV station RTL who, Karl explained, can put his restaurant in front of an audience of 60 million people in  Europe.

To spice up the evening, Nooror, helped by daughter Sandra, gave the girls a lesson in making somtam (Thai-style papaya salad), before they all trooped out along the red-carpeted duck walk (the grounds were rather soggy for the spike heels the girls were all wearing) to a special area set up for their first foray into Thai cuisine.

Lit by oil lamps and a barrage of flashes from dozens of cameras, the beauties got to grips with their pestles (some evidently for the first time) and created somtam of their own, with advice from Nooror, Sandra and members of the Blue Elephant kitchen. Then, of course, they had to taste it. How was it? Some thought it was a little on the spicy side; others gave it the thumbs-up.

Getting to grips with those pestles.

Then it was back to the big house for cocktails on the newly-laid turf, and a huge buffet dinner in the rooms that had been opened for the evening.

The hardy girls had been up since 3:30 am to prepare for yet another photo shoot, yet managed to stay chatty and looking fresh, with only the occasional stifled yawn.

The genial Karl Steppe hopes the rest of the house – the other downstairs rooms, the upstairs, the kitchen and cookery school – will be open in three months or so. “We prayed for no rain tonight, and that worked. Now we are praying for an opening in three months,” he grinned.

The open-air restaurant is full of John Underwood's art.

There are plenty of restaurants in Phuket with views. But a restaurant with a view of a factory? Would we recommend this? Actually, we would, because this is an unusual factory – it’s John Underwood’s Art Factory on the bypass road, where John recently opened a quirky eatery for all.

The menu is simple, and the food – produced in an open kitchen – is excellent. The small menu of 15 items is all Asian but with a good variety; items include Thai-style seafood salad, lemongrass salad, chicken in coconut milk with galangal, sukiyaki, various stir-fried dishes, fried rice with pork, chicken or seafood.

Prices are very reasonable, ranging from 45 to 150 baht. To wash it all down there’s a variety of hot or cold drinks, beer or wine.

Blue elephants and tin siding. Note the hand next to the elephant on the right. It was retrieved from a rubber glove factory.

Surrounding diners is an eclectic – eccentric, even – collection of Underwood artifacts. The chairs come in a variety of shapes and colours and there are “distressed”-looking tables. One has a top made from an old tin Coca-Cola sign. Another has a top made from strips of another Coke sign, woven together.

The centrepiece is a full-size pool table, rehabilitated with a top made from parquet flooring. Above it hangs an extraordinary chandelier – sort of Victorian, sort of art deco, entirely Underwood. Just outside the open-sided restaurant are bizarre and amusing statues made from junk metal and old bits of wood.

Just about everything you can see in and around the restaurant is made from bits of something else – John has a personal mission to re-use, rehabilitate and recycle whenever he can.

“The thing about recycling,” he explains, “is the perception of beauty; the best way to achieve luxury is to change the perception of beauty. For me a tent can be as beautiful as a marble villa. The beauty’s already there in the object.”

At the back of the restaurant is a glass wall, through which you look down on the factory floor below. Showers of sparks fly from grinders, flashes of blinding brilliance flare from welders. Everywhere someone is filing, cutting or assembling arcane kits of bits that will, when finished, adorn a five-star resort or a beautiful holiday home.

The factory floor.

To see other examples of John’s unique work, take a wander around the Indigo Pearl Resort at Nai Yang Beach, and especially have a drink in the Tongkah Tin Syndicate bar, or dine at Hung Fat restaurant in Kalim, designed and built by the man. Other places on Phuket that feature his work include the JW Marriott, Dewa Resort and the Mövenpick in Karon.

So why a restaurant? “We already have a showroom-cum-fine art gallery, and I want to make it a centre for fine arts [already, the Phuket Writers Bloc meets there] so it seemed a good idea to have a restaurant as well, where people could meet or could pick up a magazine and have a cup of coffee or something to eat.”

Underwood Art is on the east side of the Phuket Town bypass road, just over 2 kilometres from the Koh Kaew intersection. The website is here. Look for a building with walls decorated with hundreds of old bits of tin roofing.

Pretty in pink - some of the Mah Song are women. © Alasdair Forbes

It’s nearly that time of year again, when hundreds of  Chinese gods and goddesses are invited down from heaven to occupy the bodies of ordinary mortals  – the Mah Song, or mounts of the gods – for the annual Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

This year’s festival runs from October 17 to 27, with processions from the main shrines winding their way around various parts of the island, a bizarre yet strangely compelling affair with the Mah Song jittering along the streets, their cheeks and sometimes other parts of their bodies pierced with a bewildering assortment of objects, ranging from decorated skewers to motorbike wheels, flagpoles (complete with flags), shovels, and much more. Some show their devotion by slicing their tongues with swords or daggers. This is not a celebration for the squeamish.

It is said that the self-inflicted injuries heal at remarkable speed and leave no scars.

It’s also very noisy, particularly around the shrines, with drums and hundreds – thousands – of firecrackers being set off to drive away evil spirits and celebrate the presence of the gods.  Brilliantly coloured flags and embroidered costumes disappear and reappear from the dense clouds of smoke from the firecrackers and from aromatic incense sticks. It’s a stunning sensory feast.

In the evenings more believers test their faith at the shrines – or San Jao – by firewalking, climbing ladders made of sharp blades – barefoot – or pouring boiling oil on themselves. It’s said no one is ever injured.

The festival begins on the 17th with the raising of lantern poles at the island’s nine main shrines. It is down these poles that the gods will descend to earth.

A shovel put to unusual use. © Alasdair Forbes

Ornate ceremonies to propitiate the gods and make offerings of food to them occupy the following three days, often starting before dawn.

The first shrine to stage its procession this year will be Sam Kong, on the east side of Phuket Town, starting at 07:19 on the 21st. Processions from the other shrines start at varying times (all calculated to be the most propitious) during the following days.

On the 26th, ceremonies are held to say farewell to the gods until the following year and then, on the 27th, the lantern poles are lowered and dismantled, signalling the end of the festival.

Throughout the festival believers – not just the Mah Song – adhere to a strict vegetarian diet. This is not as difficult as it may sound to the carnivores among us; food stalls set up around the shrines offer a stunning array of delicious foods, all of it veggy.

For those who want to join in whole-heartedly, there are other rules, too, which may be seen at the official website, here. Bring your camera. The gods often seem to be strangely attached to having their photo taken.  And bring an umbrella – October in Phuket can bring with it weather that Noah would recognise.

Phraya Rassada, the wily governor who got tin companies to build roads and government offices. This statue is at the top of Rang Hill.

Search the web for information on historical buildings in Phuket and you’ll get stacks of hits for the old downtown area of Phuket Town, with its charming Sino-Portuguese shop-houses etc etc etc. Fair enough – Thalang Rd is definitely worth a visit. But try to find anything about the old government quarter of the town and you’ll probably draw a blank. Let’s try to redress the balance a little.

Roughly 100 years ago, long before tourism, the tin boom was reaching its height in Phuket. The island was pockmarked with huge holes as mechanisation raised mine production to new heights. The boom was a huge bonus for the island’s government, headed by Governor Kosimbee na Ranong or, to give him his royal title, Phraya Rassadanupradit Mahitsaraphakdi.

Lord Rassada, as Governor of every community down the west peninsular coast from Ranong to Satun, had grander visions than most when it came to tin. He invited major international mining companies in, and then made sure they paid in full, though not necessarily in cash.

One way they paid for their mining concessions was through building infrastructure in the government quarter on the northeast side of the town. Many klongs (canals) and roads were built or improved this way, along with many of the province’s government buildings, which are still in use today.

The largest building in this area is the Sala Klang, or Provincial Hall. Designed by an Italian architect, it took six years to build – from 1907 to 1913.

Delicate, airy galleries surround the Provincial Hall.

It was Thailand’s first reinforced concrete building, though you would never guess this from looking at it. The open galleries all around it and the fretwork decorations everywhere give the building a delicate, airy feeling that absolutely does not say “concrete”. When built, the Provincial Hall had 99 doors but no windows, allowing breezes free play and keeping staff cool. (It’s since been fitted with air-conditioning and windows. A pity.)

Round the exterior walls are hung dozens of photographs of Phuket in the past – stark contrasts with the Phuket of today.

The Governor's Mansion is surprisingly modest in scale.

The Governor’s Mansion, one street over, dates from the same era. Set in spacious grounds, it echoes the Sino-Portuguese architecture seen in many streets in old Phuket City. The building is surprisingly modest in scale, though one imagines it is still daunting for any modern governor to lay down his head in the same bedroom where Lord Rassada slept. Or perhaps it’s inspiring. Next door is the yet more modest but equally charming residence of the Provincial Deputy Governor, or Palad.

Across Damrong Rd from the Provincial Hall is the Office of Disaster Prevention & Mitigation. However, the ODPM is a relatively recent arrival in this building, which was originally the all-important Tin Mines Department, keeping an eye on the industry and ensuring that King Rama V and the local government received their fair share of the wealth flowing from the mines.

The old law court now functions as offices for the judiciary.

Diagonally across from the Provincial Hall, at the foot of To Sae Hill is the original Provincial Court, gleaming white and set in well ordered gardens. It is still used for offices of the legal establishment, though legal cases are now heard in the much larger modern court house up the hill behind it.

Those found guilty in the court were generally shipped no more than 500 meters down the road to the Provincial Prison. The gaol is still in use today, a century after it was built.

A wander around the nearby streets is always pleasant in good weather. This is all government land, untouched by development, so most of the streets are shaded by huge trees planted at the time the Provincial Hall was built. There are other rewards: The old Red Cross Building, for example, also harks back to the same graceful architectural era, when tourism was unknown and Patong was a tiny fishing community.

The restaurant has panoramic views of Phuket Town and the east coast of the island.

Phuket View restaurant, on two levels, is tucked into the east side of Rang Hill and surrounded by giant forest trees. Both levels are open to wide views, but the upper level has a roof, reducing the heat of the day and keeping the occasional shower from spoiling dinner.

The menu is extensive, with a variety of meat, fish and vegetarian dishes, curries and soups. There are even some Western items listed, though we wold not recommend these as highly as the Thai ones.

However, the restaurant’s version of Penang, a spicy red curry with pork or chicken, is highly recommended. Richly flavoured with a coconut milk base, it gets a lift from the addition of crushed peanuts, a speciality of the house.

Or try the Pla Dook Foo – catfish that is raked with a fork and then fried, resulting in a crunchy, frizzy dish, only slightly spicy but delicious.

Another recommendation is the Yam Tua Pu – wing-bean salad. Wing beans are about four inches long, and star-shaped in cross-section. Sliced up with shallots, mint, basil and a touch of chili, they make a delightfully refreshing dish. For soup, the tom kha gai is recommended, with its aroma of lemon grass and galangal.

Phuket View is a fine place for watching the sunset. Even though it’s on the east side of the island, the sky above  catches the glow of the sunset. It’s also cooler at that time of day. Service is friendly and attentive; you’ll find it quite difficult to empty your glass before it is refilled.

At any time of day or night, the panorama is magnificent, with the southeast coast of the island spread out in front of you, from Koh Sirey on the left, to the Giant Buddha atop the Nakkerd Hills on the right.

In front is Cape Panwa, the calm waters of Chalong Bay, and Koh Lone. Closer by are the tightly clustered roofs of the century-old centre of Phuket City.

The restaurant is surrounded on both sides and above by old forest, and bordered in front by frangipani and bougainvillea, a stunning floral display during the winter season. Crickets and cicadas can get so loud at sunset as to almost drown out conversation, and during the day there is always birdsong. Definitely a place to linger, appreciating good food and tropical nature at the same time.

Phuket View is halfway up Rang Hill, next to the Channel 11 TV station. Take the small road up the hill from the lights next to Vachira Hospital, which is on Yaowarat Rd. The restaurant is large, so usually it’s necessary to book only on public holidays. Tel: 076-216865/222169.

Cool and shady - the entrance to the China Inn Café.

The China Inn Cafe is one of Phuket City’s hidden jewels; even some people who have lived in Phuket all their lives have yet to realise it is there. Yet it’s been featured in Thai and foreign magazines, has been visited by royalty and was featured in Condé Nast Traveller magazine’s worldwide Hot List in 2007.

The restaurant was born of a romantic notion and a more practical one. The romantic notion was desire the desire of Supat “Noi” Phromchan, since she was a child growing up nearby, to possess what she describes as “the most beautiful house on Thalang Road”.

The romantic notion fitted the practical one; six years ago she ran an antiques shop nearby, with valuable regular customers she needed to entertain from time to time. “It was hard,” she explains, “to find a restaurant they liked to go to again and again.” She decided to open her own.

After the China Inn Cafe opened in October 2004, she amalgamated the two businesses, so that now, in order to reach the restaurant, one walks through a couple of anterooms where antiques are displayed.

Tables are arranged in the shade alongside the courtyard wall, looking out into the delightful garden.

The front rooms are dark and cool, with light from the enclosed garden beyond beckoning one to eat just a few steps away from the kitchen at the far end. The restaurant is a cool green haven in the centre of the city, a place to linger after lunch with a good book or good conversation. No one ever hurries out of the China Inn Cafe.

But getting the building to its current charming state was no easy task. The beautiful house Khun Noi knew as a child was a crumbling wreck by the time she signed the lease.

“It was very expensive to do it up,” she recalls, “even though we tried to do as much as we could ourselves. It wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be.” Despite the fact that the building is a classic 100-year-old Chinese shop-house built according to feng shui principles, there was no help from the government to preserve it.

Nor is it easy top look after, she says. She taps paint flaking from one of the walls. “Maintenance is difficult,” she admits. “We repaint every year.”

Electricity, drains and water pipes have also been problems, mainly because modern living puts greater demands on infrastructure than the lifestyle of 100 years ago, when the servants used to bathe alfresco in the area that now contains the restaurant’s garden, and where one can still see the original well.

But has her childhood dream come true? She breaks into a big smile. “Ninety-nine percent,” she says.

Apart from making the dream come true, the restaurant allows her to indulge her two other passions – cooking and gardening. She can often be found in the kitchen, helping the two cooks, or unobtrusively tidying up a heliconia or an orchid. “Things seem to grow easily here,” she says.

The restaurant is small, capable of handling 25 people at a time, seated, or a maximum of 75 for a private buffet. But it has attracted considerable attention in all the right places.

One couple who popped in for a cup of tea (well, it took a bit more organizing than that) were the King and Queen of Sweden, who were in Thailand celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.

Another visitor was a queen of a different kind: Natalie Glebova, Miss Universe 2005, who was on a walking tour of the old town after her win in the competition, held in Bangkok.

The menu concentrates on good, simple food, both Thai and Western-style, with delightful Thai desserts. “I like to cook,” Khun Noi says. “Home cooking – the menu is from the family kitchen and my husband’s favourites. And we know what our friends like.”

The China Inn Cafe is at 20, Thaland Rd, Phuket City, Tel: 076-356239. From May to October it is open 9 am to 6 pm, while from November to April it is open from 9am to 6pm from Monday to Wednesday, and from 11 am to 11 pm from Thursday to Saturday. It is closed on Sundays.

The old building is currently covered in scaffolding and the entire roof has been removed, replaced by a temporary tin one.

The Phra Pitak Chinpracha Mansion, the largest of the old tin boom mansions in Phuket Town, which has been quietly crumbling for a couple of decades, is being resurrected and will, by the end of this year, be a chic 300-seat restaurant run by international gourmet Thai chain Blue Elephant.

Some parts are still in good condition, including the tile floor downstairs...

The mansion was built by Tan Ma Sieng, who made his fortune mostly from mining tin in Phuket and was ennobled as Phra Pitak Chinpracha by the King of Thailand. It is built in a style known as Sino-Colonial or, to the Hokkien Chinese on the island, as “Ang mor lau”  – houses of the red monkeys, the red monkeys being Europeans.

Tan’s descendants, the Tantawanitj family, have leased the crumbling building for 30 years to Blue Elephant, which is spending some 40 million baht – more than a million bucks – on the renovation of the 20-room mansion.

...and the tile friezes around some of the walls...

It’s a huge task. For a start, the entire roof is being replaced, both the 100-year-old hardwood  frame and the roof tiles. In the meantime, a tin roof has been erected over the whole house to keep the rain out. Rotted timber flooring and termite-riddled window frames have to be repaired replaced. Modern wiring and plumbing has to be installed.

Parts of the building are still in surprisingly good condition, however. The small tiles on the ground floor are being left largely alone, the stairs are in reasonable condition and decorative tile friezes on some of the walls are still as good as new. On the other hand, the old kitchen looks like a bomb hit it.

Asked what her biggest challenge is, Blue Elephant’s in-house architect, Sasiwan Makhaprasit, promptly replied, “Getting it completed on time”. She added, “It’s very difficult to fix – every detail, the entire roof, the floors and windows. We’re trying to repair rather than replace.”

...but the kitchen still needs a bit of work.

Helping with this procedure is the construction company Pradittananuruk which, Sasiwan says, “has good connections” with the government’s  Fine Arts Department and its experts on old Thai buildings. The Fine Arts Department also advised on the renovation of Phuket’s old post office and the old mansion on Ranong Rd that now houses the offices of Thai Airways International in Phuket Town. Pradittananuruk currently has 50 workers on site, and expects this to rise to 80.

In Phuket, as in many other cities, the restaurant will have attached to it a Thai cooking school, for which a new building will be constructed. The current rather featureless garden will be extensively landscaped.

Blue Elephant was founded in 1980 by Nooror Somany Steppe and her Belgian husband Karl Steppe, who opened their first restaurant in Brussels. Four years later they opened what has become the city’s top Indian restaurant, La Porte des Indes.

A Blue Elephant followed in London in 1986, and the company now has restaurants in Paris, Copenhagen, Lyon, Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Malta, Beirut, Moscow, Jakarta and, of course, Bangkok, which opened in 2002, also in a renovated 100-year-old mansion. There is also a second Porte des Indes in London. In addition to Phuket, more Blue Elephants are due to open soon in Jakarta, Jeddah and Abu Dhabi.

On top of all the restaurants, Blue Elephant recently set up a factory in Thailand to make gourmet Thai frozen meals – 50,000 a day – for those who cannot make it to the nearest Blue Elephant restuarant.

Why “Blue Elephant”? The owners say it’s because blue is the royal colour on the Thai flag and the elephant is Thailand’s national animal. They also point out, “If you see a blue elephant you will never forget it.”  True enough.

The Phra Pitak Chinpracha Mansion is at the intersection of Krabi Rd and Satun Rd, close to the old centre of Phuket Town. The restaurant is due to open in November or December this year.