Welcome to Phuket, or Buket (“mountain” in Malaysian, and not, as many believe, the milkmaid’s ubiquitous accessory), as the Malays first named it – an island of extremes.

Extreme beauty, extreme humidity as well as extreme ugliness. You don’t have to look very far for beauty here as …. Well, didn’t you notice anything on the ride from the airport? As for humidity, try a spot of afternoon shopping down Rasada Road or an evening jog. That’ll get your shirt stuck to your back faster than any sauna back home ever could. If you want to avoid the ugliness, take my advice: stay out of Patong’s singles bars past nightfall. Simple as that.

Extremes here come in every shape and size, ranging from tiny dusky beauties (local) to muscular fishermen (local) to grotesque sunburnt hulks (imported) but, as with most things human, there’s one common denominator: food. Most expats are surprised and delighted with Thai food, so it’s no wonder that half of people’s lives seem to be spent in restaurants here. But beware. Expats have been known to turn into bizarre shapes after a few months of the local diet. What looks healthy and fresh could very well be laden with cholesterol and calories. Squid and eggs, for example. And, if you’re watching your weight, you should know that fresh fish, as well as many a noodle dish, is often fried in waist-thickening palm oil.

If there’s one culprit that’s most to blame for the human topography of the island, that has to be beer. The sight of a spindly-legged man supporting a barrel-like midriff is one of the distinctive sights of the average Phuket beer bar. Its main consumer – Homo heinekenus, an extreme amongst extremes – has but one aim in life: to install himself in close proximity to life’s creature comforts, namely a bottle of beer, a bed and a bargirl. Not a dangerous species, so long as alcohol blood level is maintained and satellite connections clear, Homo h. will engage in friendly banter at the drop of a hat. Vocabulary, however, is seriously impaired and mainly consists of random phrases centred around words like nice, holiday, phew, goal, free kick, will-you-look-at-the-knockers-on-that-one, and the ubiquitous round, whose, is? Bleary-eyed but happy, Heinekenus is not to be found in gyms or jogging on the beaches, least of all attending snooty art openings in upmarket hotels.

Larger-than-average Romeos can take heart in learning that being big in Thailand isn’t as much a liability as it is in the West. In fact, having a spare tyre is seen by many women as a sign of luck and success. After all, it takes a lot of cooking to maintain that belly, you know. On the other end of the scale, being skinny has no visible advantages except in slipping through crowded doorways to escape from parties where chubby dudes are hogging all the chicks.

The solution to the skinniness problem, of course, is to work out. To this end there are several gyms dotted around the island, churning out pumped-up Adonises who avoid clothing in much the same way as many animals shun fire and bright light. Once you’ve been confronted with a barful of half-naked gym addicts, you’ll know why clothing was invented in the first place.

Apart from the gyms, Phuket offers limitless physical exercise: canoeing, windsurfing, walking and trekking as well as biking and swimming. As a result, we encounter another extreme: the fitness freak. Working out isn’t always easy in the tropics, yet a friend of mine cycles 20km daily then jogs up Kata Hill and back all before breakfast, which presumably consists of two rump steaks, four pints of buttermilk and half a chicken (broiled). He’s huge and scary-looking, yet really kind to old ladies and babies. Or so he tells me. But his chiropractic profession involves bending people into shapes they never thought imaginable – impervious to their screams and cries for help – then pummeling them to lard before getting them to actually pay for it. After that he pulls their arms off and attacks them with the soggy end. Okay, so I exaggerated the last part but the point is there – it is possible to stay in good shape in spite of the heat, but it takes hard work, dedication and possibly a chiropractic degree.

As delicious as it is, however, some expats max out on Thai food after a couple of years, choosing rather to stockpile frozen meat-and-potato pies, cans of baked beans and Vegemite by the truckload. These are the same farangs who – before the advent of superstores – used to accost newly-arrived yachties for anything that had a ring-pull opener on it, and many a nautical newcomer did a surprisingly brisk under-the-table trade in rusty past-the-sell-by-date cans of what smelled like Beatles-era cat food. Why on earth anyone would be interested in a dented three-year-old can of beef Stroganoff when there was freshly-barbecued Muslim chicken just up the road was an oft-discussed but never-resolved mystery among yachties. Local expats, in turn, marvelled at the quantity of alcohol visiting yachties poured down their throats and, given that local firewater has enough preservatives to pickle a tiger, often enquired after a yachtie’s spouse’s health, not with a polite, “How is he?” but a whispered, “Is your husband still alive?”

With the husband at the helm – and hopefully in good health – as the visitor’s boat pulls out from Chalong, a surprising number of departing yachts’ logs read something like this:
Ship’s log 12.08.2000 – Phuket, Thailand.
What a place! Every shape and size! Local food out-of-this-world. Sold 2 cases of 1985 Spam within hours of arrival. Never would have believed it. Discovered that yes, am still attractive to ladies in spite of my 62-inch waist. (Martha’s not speaking to me.) Drank with a guy called ‘Keef’ over in Patong. Strange. He only had a 14-word vocabulary, but could discuss English football in depth. On the way back I almost got run over by some maniac on a bicycle – at 7.30 in the morning, for God’s sake. Booze gloriously cheap and as a result have discovered the best way to pickle a tiger. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any left down here …