Rawai

Rawai does not have a beautiful beach. The shore at low tide is flat and rocky and the water is shallow enough that you can walk fifty metres out and still be ankle-deep. None of this matters, because Rawai is not a place you come to swim — you come to eat, and to watch the fishing boats come in, and to understand a version of Phuket that predates the tourism industry by several generations. The Chao Le — the sea gypsies, an Austronesian people who have lived along these southern coasts for centuries — have a village here at the far end of the seafront road, and their wooden houses on stilts over the water are the oldest structures on this part of the island.

I arrived at the seafood market at eight in the morning, when the longtails were just pulling in. The market sits right on the beach and operates with the organized efficiency of a place that has been doing this a long time: whole fish laid on ice by size and species, baskets of crab, bags of tiger prawns and mantis shrimp, live lobster in tanks of aerated seawater. There are no prices displayed. You negotiate, or you let the vendor tell you what things cost and you decide whether to argue. I bought a bag of tiger prawns and a mud crab that weighed about a kilogram and looked at me with what I chose to interpret as resignation.

Behind the market, a row of cooking shacks will prepare whatever you’ve bought for a fee. This is the transaction that makes Rawai famous among people who pay attention: you buy the freshest possible seafood at market price, walk it thirty metres to someone who owns a wok and a gas flame, and within twenty minutes you have grilled prawns with lime and chili sauce and a crab steamed with garlic and glass noodles. The table is plastic. The napkins are paper. The food is the best thing you will eat in Phuket.

The road south from Rawai leads to Promthep Cape, the southernmost point of Phuket, where the peninsula narrows to a rocky headland that drops into the Andaman on three sides. The sunset from the cape draws crowds and tour buses, and I won’t pretend the crowd doesn’t diminish it slightly. But the view — the water lit up in orange and the silhouettes of the distant islands to the southwest — is one of those things where the cliché is in fact accurate. The cape also marks the point where Phuket runs out of island, and there is something satisfying about standing at the end of a place you’ve been exploring and seeing where it stops.

When to go: Rawai’s market operates year-round. The fishing is most active from November to May when the seas are calmer and the boats go out further. During the southwest monsoon (May–October), the catch is smaller but the prices are lower and the crowds at the market are thinner.