Phuket News Analysis
PHUKET: From now on, ire and rain are likely to make Phuket less of a tropical paradise and more of an urban jungle as serious work begins on Phuket's 600 million baht underpass.
The rain, incidentally, is expected to last for a week. Fortunately it's confined to just Phuket, so those visitors heading to Phang Nga or Krabi should stay dry.
The ire will last a lot longer, at least for the two years of Central Festival Phuket underpass construction.
Phuketwan travelled by car from the Tesco Lotus junction in Phuket City to Chalong Circle last night about 6pm.
The trip took one hour, twice the time it would usually take, down the bypass road to Chao Fa Road West.
Tourists travelling to or from Phuket International Airport will need to make extra allowances to get to their destination on time.
And if there's a secondary issue, like bad weather, or a crash . . . Phuket will seem just like Bali.
The advent of the Phuket underpass puts to rest forever the debate about how to describe Phuket. Inevitably, the small town thinkers - the people who still imagine Phuket as it once was in the 20th century - have lost the argument.
What should happen is the creation of a better balance between Phuket The City and its natural delights, the beaches and the reefs.
People don't go on a tropical holiday to be trapped in traffic, so in compensation, the natural delights of Phuket have to be preserved at all costs.
Phuket, once beautiful all over, is now a city, a sprawling mass of traffic and interconnected rows of shophouses along main roads that stretch north and south, east and west.
It's a difficult cross for a tropical holiday island to bear.
A few blocks of Sino-Portuguese heritage remain at the heart of Old Phuket Town, but the vast urban district around the traditional heart is clearly now Phuket City, as the arrival of a Phuket underpass proves.
And the island is developing concrete outcrops so fast that it won't be long before Phuket City links to other cities and Phuket is one vast city, broken only by the beaches and a few green hills.
All this is worth contemplating the next time you are trapped in gridlock on Phuket on holidays. Bali, remind yourself, is even worse.
Our tip for those travelling between Phuket City and southern Phuket is to use Chao Fa Road East.
For a time it was far, far slower to navigate the Chao Fa Road East route than to take speedier Chao Fa Road West.
But guess what? The eastern road is now much, much faster. That's progress.
Natural delights, beaches and reefs???
All the beaches are like Brighton on a bank holiday and all the reefs died a couple of years ago.Tropical paradise...
dream on.
Posted by Anonymous on December 2, 2012 10:49