At the end of a tiny lane in Phuket City, hidden away between clusters of banks and restaurants, lies a petite yet beautiful shrine. Not many people are aware of the place, which is strange, since it was built by an amazing man who, by rights, should be one of the best-known men on the island. For Luang Amnart Nararak, according to his family, was responsible for the start of Phuket’s now world-famous Vegetarian Festival. He also built a beautiful Sino-Portuguese style house in Dibuk Road, and paid for the first road from Phuket City to Patong.

There’s much debate about how the Vegetarian Festival started on Phuket. Most accounts say that a dance troupe visited the island over 100 years ago and, after arrival, became very sick. The troupe thought they had become ill because they had failed to appease their nine Emperor Gods, a practice based on both Taoist and animistic beliefs. To correct matters, they performed a nine-day ceremony involving meditation, body piercing and a strict vegetarian diet. Soon afterwards, according to the legend, they recovered. (A competing account claims that the festival was brought to the island by one of two secret societies that came to mine tin.)

Phuket Magazine had the good fortune to be able to interview Luang Amnart’s relatives and hear their story. Tan Koo Ad, later known locally as Luang Amnart, was born in 1848 in Hokkien’s Suan Jae Tang Hue District, China, to a working-class farming family. He worked hard as a young man growing rice and vegetables, but was never happy with his lot; he was the type who was always striving for more. In his late teens, at his own engagement party to a local woman, he heard friends talking about leaving by boat for the faraway lands of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand to seek their fortune. He decided to join the young would-be entrepreneurs and, after months of sailing, finally settled on Phuket, where Chinese communities were springing up like rice in the monsoon season.

The volume of immigrants increased dramatically during the 19th century, when vast amounts of tin ore were discovered in the Kathu area. With mines opening every week, the island soon faced a serious manpower shortage, and governors had to bring in Chinese workers from Penang in Malaysia. Penang was the main port of arrival from China, and the city where Chinese leaders had long been firmly involved in the Thai tin import-export business.

By the mid-1800s, it’s estimated, over 30,000 Chinese workers were employed in the local mining industry. Most lived in Talang and Kathu districts, and many went on to grow very rich. Luang Amnart was one of these. Fast becoming one of the wealthiest men around, he soon married and built a house in Kathu. With his wife, a locally born Chinese woman named Yoklean, Luang Amnart had four daughters and four sons. He later brought over his other bride from Hokkien and had another daughter with her, the two wives living under the same roof.

The architecture of the Dibuk Road home, completed in 1911, was influenced by a European design then popular in Malacca and Penang. The house remains in extraordinary condition, considering its age; although the exterior could use a coat or two of paint, the inside looks just as it did all those years ago. So much so that one can imagine the place when it was overflowing with children, servants, cooks and the smell of boiling noodles. Indeed, some of the family live in it to this day.

Luang Amnart apparently loved pleasing people, and used his wealth not only to ensure that his family was well educated — the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren all studied in Penang — but also to improve the lives of those around him. He contributed to several important projects during a period of rapid growth in Phuket Town at the start of the 20th century, among other things paying for the construction of the first road to Patong and for the Chinese opera to visit from China and put on regular performances.

On one visit the entire Chinese opera troupe fell ill. They believed they’d become sick because they’d neglected to worship their Taoist gods during their trip to Thailand. (In China, there was a period towards the end of every year where nine days of festivities were held to thank the gods for their protection. Luang Amnart charted a boat for them to go home to recover and, the family told us, he instructed them to bring experienced festival organizers back with them to start the ceremony here and keep the gods happy.

He arranged for the nine sacred lantern poles to be brought over, and thus the island’s vegetarian festival was born. Every year since, the festival has been held during the first nine days of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, attracting thousands of visitors. Throughout, local mediums are "possessed" by the nine deities, and put on a spectacular display of self-mortification and ritual dancing.

In September 1913, King Rama VI visited Phuket and bestowed upon Luang Amnart the new family name Tantavej. Currently, there are more than 100 Tantavejs. Luang Amnart passed away in his 70s in Dibuk Road, and was buried on a huge plot of land in Kathu close to where he built his first house. A hundred men carried his casket on foot from town to the burial site where a ceremony lasting several weeks was conducted to bid him farewell. A monument to him remains at the site in Kathu.

Luang’s house has seen birth, death, growth, pleasure, pain and love. It has seen the exchange of marriage vows, business and community meetings, and great parties. The entire Tantavej clan once lived in the house together, but it became too crowded. Most moved out, but the family remain very close, and still gather there on full-moon days. It’s currently occupied by Luang’s daughter, now in her 80s, and his granddaughter, Nga Tantavej, together with her husband and son. The house sits back off the road in imposing fashion, and must have looked very grand in days past.

The building has stone tile flooring (possibly imported from Italy), arched features over shuttered doors and windows, stark white walls and is furnished in part with mother-of-pearl-inlaid antiques. The family keep it uncluttered, much as it was when it was first constructed. It has a rustic feel to it, and is imbued in history with hundreds of family photographs adorning the corridor walls. The two storeys have two wings, a large reception room, many bedrooms and a central courtyard area. There’s a "clean kitchen" for the finer preparation of food and a "dirty kitchen" for such chores as plucking chickens, washing bloodied meat, chopping fish. The exterior has Corinthian and Doric decoration and pillars, which blend harmoniously with distinctly Chinese teak louvres and scripts above the front door to bless the house.

Similar homes are found in Thalang and Yaowarat Roads together with lots of Chinese-style shophouses. In one such structure, just next door to the Dibuk Road house, Luang Amnart’s great-granddaughter Joom has a delightful shop called Oriental Closet, maintaining the family custom by selling a gorgeous range of silk tunics and jewellery.

Although Luang’s house isn’t open to the public, you can still get a glimpse into the past by way of a fine example of Sino-European architecture in Krabi Road. About halfway down the north side of the street lies an old house that is open to the public, at 100 baht per person. It’s open from 9am to 4pm.

Many thanks to Joom Tantavej, her husband Sam and the Tantavej family for their invaluable support in preparing this article and for allowing Phuket Magazine into their private lives.