Chalong

Most visitors to Chalong pass through rather than stop — it is the town where the dive operations depart from, the place with the Big Buddha visible on the hill, the junction you pass through on the way to Rawai or the south. I stopped because I took a wrong turn and found myself in the car park of Wat Chalong at eight in the morning, and the temple was already full of people who had not come because a guidebook told them to.

Wat Chalong is the most important Buddhist temple on Phuket — a complex of several buildings in the ornate southern Thai style, with chedis that catch the early light and turn it to gold, and a main shrine hall where the faithful come to make offerings and have their fortunes read and talk to the monks in the unhurried way of people who have been doing this every week for decades. There are tourists here too, obviously, but they are outnumbered by the local population on most days. I bought a small garland of jasmine from a woman outside the gate, placed it at the base of a gilded Luang Pho Chaem statue inside, and felt the particular satisfaction of participating correctly rather than just observing. The smell of incense and the sound of bells and the monks moving through the complex in their orange robes made thirty minutes feel like they had some weight.

The Chalong Bay Rum distillery is a five-minute drive from the temple and is either a surprise or a cliché depending on your relationship with artisan spirits. The rum is made from Thai sugarcane and aged in oak barrels in a warehouse that smells extraordinary — molasses and vanilla and the particular sweetness of fermentation in tropical heat. The tasting room sells both the white and aged expressions, and the aged rum is the kind of bottle that justifies paying excess baggage on a return flight. I bought two.

The marina at Chalong is where Phuket’s sailing community operates: long-keeled yachts anchored in the bay, dive boats running twice-daily departures to the Similan Islands and Phi Phi, longtails for hire to anyone who wants to reach the small offshore islands to the east. The waterfront restaurants near the pier are not remarkable but they are reliable, and eating seafood on a deck over the water with the boats coming and going and the hills of the mainland visible to the east is a perfectly adequate way to spend a lunchtime.

The Big Buddha — a forty-five-metre white marble statue of Phra Phuttha Ming Mongkol Akenakiri — sits on Nakkerd Hill above Chalong and is visible from most of the southern island. The approach road is steep and the complex is under ongoing construction, but the views from the hill, 360 degrees across the island and out to Phang Nga Bay to the northeast, justify the climb. The statue itself is less interesting up close than it is as a landmark from the bay.

When to go: Year-round for the temple and distillery. The dive boats depart for the Similans from October to May — the Similan Islands National Park closes from mid-May to mid-October. Chalong Bay is sheltered enough that the monsoon doesn’t affect land activities significantly.