Weekly Travel Feature

Riding High on Phuket the Road that No One Takes

Prepared by Harold Stephens

Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International

What are the first things that come to mind when someone mentions Phuket, other than the Tsunami that hit the island a year ago? Beautiful beaches and blue water, of course. It might be scuba diving.  For others, sports fishing, after that prize sailfish or black marlin. And what about yachting, chartering a sleek yacht and skippering it yourself. Whatever, Phuket has it all, including a vibrant nightlife after a day’s fun. No one can deny, these are the attractions that draw visitors from around the world. But there’s more to Phuket than sun, sand and water. There are the hills, green lofty hills, hills with dense forests, hills with lush tropical vegetation, and hills that offer adventure, but of a different sort. Four-wheel drive safari. It’s there, waiting, and all it takes is the spirit, a good four-wheel drive vehicle, and a couple extra bottles of drinking water, just in case. I could mention a good map, but there is no need. Where we are going, there are no maps available.

My curiosity about the interior of Phuket came when I sailed into Patong Bay years ago aboard my schooner and looked up at the hills. From a distance they appeared like contorted dragons, shrouded in mystery and intrigue. I wondered if anyone had every climbed them, and what was up there. Later, I learned I hadn’t been the only one who was interested. Anthropologists tell us the original inhabitants of Phuket were Negritos, and they lived not along the beaches but in limestone caves in the hills. Early Chinese trading ships travelling to and from India visited the island, and they too were interested in the hills and forests. Here they could get a ready supply of firewood, resin, wood-oil and pitch for their ships, all which came from the forests up high. Chinese chronicles also mentioned merchants could trade for Rhino horns. Had rhinoceros once lived in the forests on Phuket?

  Other early travellers also made references to the green heart of Phuket. In 1512, d’Albuquerque, the Portuguese admiral who captured Malacca, mentioned “mountainous” Phuket, which he called Inusalao; and some 250 years later, Captain Francis Light made notes in the ship’s log about the “undulating hills of Junkceylon,” the name for Phuket back then. Captain Light came to Junkceylon while searching for a suitable location to establish a port for the British East Indian Company. It seems he fell in love with the island, and also with a Thai women whom he married. She bore him three children. At Tha Rua on the east coast he built a house, and, so to speak, settled in. Why he decided to establish Penang as the East India Company settlement instead of Phuket has baffled historians ever since—unless he want to keep Phuket quiet and peaceful, and for himself.

If there was traffic into the hills since earliest times, then there must still be roads, or at least trails of some sort. But roads, or the lack of roads, have always been a problem on Phuket. It wasn’t until very recently that roadways were constructed to connect the bays around the island. Before, to get from one bay to another, travellers had to go first to Phuket Town, by trucks converted into buses.  Phuket Town was like a hub on a cartwheel, with roads radiating out from the hub to all the bays. The roads were terribly rough, potholed and deeply rutted.

But today roads abound and connect the bays without the need of travelling to Phuket Town. They are well marked, making driving easy, and there are easy-to-read road maps in both English and Thai, provided free or charge by travel agencies and the Tourism Authority of Thailand. A great way to see Phuket is behind the driver’s wheel, by renting a car and taking off. This what we had in mind, photographer Robert Stedman and me, and found an AVIS four-wheel drive Suvuki that suited our purpose. It didn’t take long to discover, those roads that run between the bays are engineering marvels. No wonder they took so long to build. Sharp curves. Deep ravines. Cliffs that drop sheer into the sea. The drive along the southwestern coast is especially lovely, with great vistas that open to wide bays far below. In places the road is steep, and motorist are advised to “use lower gear.” At some of the summits, like Katau Point between Karon and Patong, motorists can park their vehicles, unpack their lunches, and with a cool breeze blowing in from the sea have picnics in the shade of a picturesque pavilion.

Good as the road maps might be, the routes I was looking for weren’t marked on the maps. Nor could anyone help me. How can you ask for directions when you don’t know where you are going, and to say “up there” and point a finger to the hills doesn’t help. After a while I thought I might have to give up. Maybe there just weren’t any roads or trails into the hills.

We may have been down but not out. Robert had brought with him from Singapore a book titled Historical Retrospect of Junkceylon Island by Colonel G.E. Gerini. We spent the night before our drive pouring though the pages. The book gave interesting accounts of early exploration of Phuket. Aside form the early Chinese, the Portuguese came in 1516, and in 1689 the French, under the command of Admiral Duguesne-Guitton, stormed the island and attempted to take possession after they had been kicked out of Ayutthaya after trying to convert the king to Christianity. The French didn’t stay long. They tired of fighting pirates. Captain Anderson Hamilton of the British navy noted that there were several good harbors along the seacoast, but the coast was thinly populated, due to the many pirates.

We came to one passage in Colonel Gerini’s book that leaped out at us. It was the reference we were looking for. Dr. Roenig, a prominent Danish Botanist, led a scientific expedition to the island in 1779 and spent several months studying the fauna and flora. One trip he made that interested us was from Patong Bay across the island to Tha Rua where Captain Light had a house. It took him four days.

Our disappointment came when we couldn’t find any trail from Patong leading into the hills. In desperation we decided to try from the other side and drove to Nam Nok where both the real road and the road on the map stops. A short walking distance above Nam Nok is Kathu Waterfall, a tourist attraction on Phuket. To our west we saw the hills rise up in a carpet of green foliage, and in the early morning a mist hovered over the topmost part like shrouds in a holy painting by the Dutch artists. The highest area we could note on the map, also to our West, was Khuan Wa standing at 546 metres, or close to 2,000 feet. It wasn’t any Mount Everest, or even Mont Kinabalu at 14,000 feet, the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, but considering one begins at seal level it is quite a steady climb upwards to the summit. This was where we wanted to go.

We began to retrace our drive back down the hill when off to the right appeared a narrow concrete roadway. It seemed completely out of place. We followed it. At last we were heading into the hills. Before long the drive became steeper, and steeper. The concrete slab gives way to two concrete paths after about a quarter of a mile, just wide enough for the wheels. Then a few hundred yards and that gave way. It was an all dirt trail now, narrow with little no room to turn around, had we wanted to turn around.
There were no sings of any sort, and no markers. Just a trail forever leading upwards. At the start of the drive there were a few houses, and now they disappeared. The trees became more dense, and the forest darker. The trail in places was rock and boulders, and we dropped into four-wheel drive and inched our way over difficult areas.

We could only see the forest that surrounded us. We heard a river below, but couldn’t see it. A lizard crossed our trail. Trailing vines hung from the tallest trees, and we almost expected Tarzan to come swinging through the trees, or at least monkeys. We stopped often and got out of the vehicle. The smell of the rain forest, dank and heavy-laden with the sent of decay, closed in around use. Unseen birds in the trees called cryptically to one another. We remembered reading in Colonel Gerini’s book about the fauna of—wild elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, buffalo, monkeys of all kinds, lizards of every description and beautiful plumed birds.

We also recalled reading about Dr. Roenig’s journey over what appeared to be the same route. The doctor had to carry all his supplies with them, and remembering these were the days before dried food and tinned goods, much of what they carried had to be alive, namely fowl. Dr. Roenig wrote that a tiger got their goose one night, and the next day they had a narrow escape from wild elephants.

We searched for tracks of tigers and elephants, but there were none. Tigers disappeared long ago. What did remain the same, as Dr. Roenig described, was the “metallic ring” of insects, which he believed were beetles. Every time we stopped, we were met with the shrill humming of these strange insects. They sounded like high-tension electrical wires, and automatically we began looking for telegraph poles. If we clapped our hands, the sounds suddenly stopped, instantly, and the forest became silent. It a few minutes it would start again.

We drove through a forest of primeval beauty. We passed huge boulders, some half the size of a city block, perhaps the very same ones Dr. Roenig encountered and wrote about. We looked for the caves he mentioned but saw none. The trees at the summit are gigantic, having been untouched by tan axe. So thick was the forest that at times the sky was blocked out and day almost became night. The canapé of growth closed around us, and often we literally had to push through low hanging tree branches and ferns rubbing against the jeep. I wished we had brought a text naming the plants and jungle growth. We could only guess what each pant was. Even in the wild there was no shortage of jungle fruit, including jackfruit, rambutans and wild bananas.

Each time when we thought we were coming to the top of the mountain, there always appeared another higher ridge ahead. The air is thin, and dehydration comes. We were forever thirsty, and thankful we had stocked bottles of water. We also discovered that in four-wheel drive, constantly going up and down steep inclines, our fuel consumption was rapid. We feared we might run out of fuel.

We had a shock when we met an on coming vehicle on the trail, the first vehicle we has seen. The driver spoke some English, and advised us to turn around and take the first road to the left, and it would take us to Patong. We turned around, found the road but it was so overgrown we wondered if the man we met might be misleading us. But he wasn’t, for we were able to follow his tire tracks over the same route.

The trail dropped sharply downwards. Now we hoped the brakes will hold.

In places the track became muddy where mountain stream crossed our path. We had to speed up to cross them, or get stuck. Eventually the dense forest gave way and below Patong Bay opened up. We had done it, crossed the backbone of Phuket.

Next week I would like to take readers to the Triathlon Phuket, with the question—do you think you could do it? A 74 year old man did, and a 14 yea old Thai girl.

Questions & Answers

Q. Dear Mr. Stephens,

Is it possible to travel overland from Thailand to Vietnam?

Daryl Kerns, Sydney

A. Dear Daryl,

It is possible but not advisable. You must pass through Cambodia and the roads there, from the Thai border to Siem Reap, are deplorable and takes a good seven-hours by bus. And that is only about a third of the way. It’s so much easier and more convenient to fly, and in a long run it is also cheaper. Hotels in route can be difficult.  —HS  

Harold Stephens

Bangkok

E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)

Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited