Tin Mining Museum Finally Opens: Get in Touch With Phuket’s Colourful History
Avoid! Early tin cutting machine in action
The B180 million Phuket Tin Mining Museum on Kathu-Koh Kaew Road in the Phuket countryside was officially opened in early March after almost five years of building and installation of attractions. (see our previous story about the Tin Mining Museum)
It should be a must see for visitors and locals alike to the island as it substantially showcases, for the first time in one venue, Phuket’s colourful tin mining past.
Indoor and outdoor exhibits in both English and Thai languages, outdoor displays including an abandoned mine with rail cars transporting and other machinery used in tin mining will carry visitors back to the early days when Chinese settlers began the tin mining industry that still survives to this day on a much smaller scale in the south of the island.
The building is designed in the Sino-Portuguese style of early Phuket Town when the Portuguese were early settlers and which gives the old Phuket Town such a distinctive flair. It is built in a square around a large open courtyard and features numerous explanations of the tin mining methods and pictures of early mining.
Step back into Phuket history
The museum is part of an ongoing strategy by the Phuket administration to promote cultural, as well as natural, attractions on Phuket.
The facility covers 400 rai and was completed in mid-2008.
Tin mining well precedes tourism as Phuket’s major income earner. One interesting aspect of the Phuket tin is that it was not associated with arsenic, as many types of tin are, thus making it less dangerous to mine.
The museum is open daily from 9am to 4pm. Entry costs B100 per foreign adult; B50 per foreign child [under 15] B50 per Thai adult and B20 per Thai child. Free entry for students in uniform, Thais over 60 years old and disabled people.
