Did You Know?
Nine Days Without Meat
Phuket's Vegetarian Festival runs for nine days each autumn, and alongside the strict diet it features devotees piercing their cheeks with objects of increasing ambition. It descends from a Chinese opera troupe that fell ill here in 1825 and recovered after adopting a vegetarian regimen.
The island is Thailand's largest, and tourism arrived late enough that the rubber and tin economy is still within living memory.
The clock: Phuket keeps UTC+7. At 8° north the sun rises and sets within about half an hour of the same time all year, which is why nothing here is scheduled by season.