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LAST UPDATE: Thursday October 23, 2003

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Phuket's Sunsets can Dazzle

But again, choose your viewing points carefully

Don't hide yourself away in your hotel rooms during, this, often the finest time of day

Viewing the sunset - watching the great red orb of the fading sun being swallowed by a tranquil Andaman Sea - is one of the must do things for every Thai visitor to this island. It is de rigeur to do this on even on the shortest visit. Local tradition proscribes that every Thai visitor to Phuket must make the pilgrimage to Laem Phrom Thep, one of the country’s most famous landmarks at the very southern tip of the island, before he can claim to have seen Phuket.

We thoroughly recommend that you don’t. Unless, that is, you love crowds, and want to watch the great spectacle with up to a thousand other people. And then join the traffic jam on departure.

But viewing the setting sun from Phuket’s west coast is a great thing to do, and there are as many places for it as there are headlands and beaches. During the high season - the northern winter - when the skies are generally quite clear, Phuket is blessed with regular, ethereal displays that stretch in vast multi-coloured rays from the western horizon to the heavens directly above.

Any of the many high points along the west coast road will give a grandstand view. The high view-point at the back of Kata Noi beach is a particularly spectacular one – always with people, but not by the traffic jam load. The headlands north of Patong Beach alos offer numerous vantage spots, many with restaurants or stalls selling cold drinks to top off the occasion. Good vantage points are available all the way up to Mai Khao beach at the island's far northern tip, where beach-side stalls thrive on Thai clients at this time of day.

Finding a small beach bar or restaurant, settling with a cold beer or cocktail and waiting for the sun to touch the water is also an especially memorable way to absorb this god-given display. Simply strolling on the beach as the sky casts reds and pinks across the heavens is also eloquent and memorable.

We need not give many directions, but do suggest you make an effort to be out someplace along the west coast at this time of day, and not stuck in your hotel room.