"But is it always like this?" visitors frequently ask — a question that many expatriates and locals answer with an emphatic shake of their head and a monosyllabic answer: "No."

Come the green season, from June to September, the very same beach described above sometimes turns into a rain-ravaged maelstrom. Whole teak logs, ship's lifebelts, bottles, coconuts and all manner of flotsam and jetsam are hurled up onto the wave-battered shoreline. Westerly gales bend and sometimes even snap shoreline palm trees; car and house windows a kilometre away become salt stained; riptides capable of toppling a person drag and suck at your feet as you paddle in the shallows — and all this under a sky the colour of slate.

I know. It's hard to believe that your recently discovered bit of tropical paradise has a dual personality. It's like meeting and falling instantly in love with the softest-eyed Asian beauty, only to discover that she's a professional bare-knuckle boxer on the side. Phuket's beaches are alarmingly schizophrenic.

But the green season has its advantages. Phuket is hotter at this time — the wind coming from the southwest — and a lot more verdant. Besides, there are breaks in the weather. Some sunny days seem almost African in their intensity. Rain showers rarely last longer than an hour at a time. The beaches are all but deserted except for surfers, dog walkers and beachcombers. And green season beaches can be starkly beautiful, a pastel palette of sky, sea, and sand.

To many minds, Kata Beach is the most scenic and atmospheric on Phuket. The graceful, tree-lined arc of its shoreline is certainly the most photogenic. A local newspaper editor recently opined, after viewing the entrants of his photo contest: "We should have put a moratorium on photos of Kata. It's just too easy to take a stunning sunset photo there." Longtail boats moor overnight, top-class hotels lie on the southern part and the by-now-ubiquitous Phuket vista of sun chairs and parasols stays true to form on Kata Beach. There's good snorkelling off Pu Island, to the north, and a simple lunch of sticky rice with deep-fried chicken bought from a vendor a refreshing option if you don't want to eat at one of the nearby restaurants. And in the green season? There's surfing — lots of it. So much so that there's an annual surfing competition, an event with quasi-religious undertones, given the amount of prayers offered up to the Almighty for the right weather conditions. In the green season, it's windblown and haggard for sure, but it's still beautiful Kata.

If you head south from Kata along the coast road, you'll traverse two fairly impressive hills. At the top of the second there's a viewpoint. Stop and take a look back from where you've just come. This photo opportunity perhaps ranks in the top 10 staggering views in the world, beach-wise. The road south eventually leads down into Nai Harn Village and Nai Harn Beach itself. This area is home to many expatriate residents. Given the fact that Nai Harn has turned into a major construction site in order to meet the housing and catering needs of the newcomers, it's a miracle that this 800m beach is so underdeveloped. One has to look fairly hard to notice Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club at the northern end, it's that well integrated into the landscape. Sundays on Nai Harn Beach are a family event, where the children of locals, visitors and expats mingle and tumble together in the surf. Paragliders, swooping and diving from thermal to thermal in the surrounding hills, give the beach the feel of a three-ring circus, as do the windsurfers streaking across the bay. In peak high season, there are always at least 20 yachts moored offshore, each at the mercy of the madcap waterskier who has threaded through them daily for the last two years, suspiciously close to the end of happy hour. To coin a phrase, Nai Harn in high season is busy tranquility.

In the green season the beach is a showcase of nature's raw strength. Much of the shoreline is bitten away by the hungry seas, changing its facade daily. As they do with all of Phuket's west-coast beaches, the westerlies deposit an amazing, often amusing range of objects on Nai Harn, creating a beachcomber's paradise. Seven-metre waves crash against granite boulders north and south of the strand, and fishermen tempt the much-feared pii talay, or sea ghost, as they perch on these rocks angling for supper. Nai Harn is virtually unswimmable at this time of year, and anyone who disagrees with the tattered "No Swim" flags would have to do so in a lifejacket with a support zodiac.

From the sublime to the almost ridiculous, Patong Beach is Coney Island with coconuts, Brighton with bananas or, perhaps, Majorca with mangoes. Yup, it's crass, rude, noisy, disorganized and sometimes weirdly wonderful. And it's heaven for hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Beach life at Patong in high season is a kaleidoscope of nationalities, body shapes and accents. If you're tired of shopping and want a rest, don't worry: hire a deck chair and the shopping will come to you. Everything, from silk to papaya salad, to hair braiding, northern Thai handicrafts, sarongs and a cold Coke is flogged by the many hawkers parading up and down this beach. On the waves, the scene is no less hectic, as jet skis buzz around fishing boats. A mega-yacht towering over the brightly painted fishing vessels is in turn overshadowed by visiting US navy ships, who shuttle their on-leave charges to shore in a seemingly never-ending ferry service. In short, it's madness, and couldn't be farther removed from the peaceful beaches to its north. Sure, Patong calms down a bit during the green season, yet there are so many land-based and non-weather-dependent activities in Patong that it's fast becoming a year-round destination.

Let's go way up to the north of Phuket and visit Mai Khao (White Wood) Beach. Here, time stands still. Early- morning mists sweep in from the sea onto this 12km beach through the casuarinas trees that form a natural curtain behind. Officially part of Sirinat National Park, Mai Khao is the yearly destination of sea turtles coming to lay their eggs. The beach is often completely deserted, the only mark of humankind being the occasional fishing boat on the horizon and the silhouettes of planes landing at Phuket International Airport to the south. Local university students often use the beach to camp and party on, and there's a bona fide camping site with all facilities for the less hardy. Very similar in nature, to the south and not far from the coast road lies smaller Nai Thon. Again, a quasi-deserted beach, Nai Thon possesses a serenity and majesty that has to be seen to be believed. And once more, the only sign of life is the odd horse rider or fisherman.