The Latest Breaking News from Phuket

PHUKET: Worshippers in this island resort province have celebrated a nine-day Taoist festival, with many piercing their faces with metal spikes and walking on hot coals to show devotion to deities.

PHUKET: An injured Swedish driver was helped safely from his burning car after crashing into a roadside signpost in Thalang district on Sunday evening.

Hundreds of devotees flocked to temples and staged processions to celebrate the annual vegetarian festival this week on the island of Phuket in southern Thailand, being held for the first time after the COVID-19 pandemic eased.

Phuket will host the Spartan Apac Championship 2022 in November, a gruelling series of races that is expected to attract 5,000 runners and generate 1 billion baht for the local economy.

The festive season in the final quarter is expected to bring hotel bookings in Phuket that match pre-Covid levels, but not every hospitality segment will reap benefits, according to the Phuket Hotels Association.

Taoist devotees had body parts pierced with objects ranging from skewers and swords to a model ship on Tuesday as Phuket's Vegetarian Festival returned from a two-year Covid-19 pandemic hiatus.

People living in tall buildings in three southern provinces — Songkhla, Phangna and Phuket — felt tremors from an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale centred off the northwestern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia early Saturday.

Over four million visitors have arrived in Phuket in the first eight months of 2022, generating at least 66 billion baht for the resort island, according to deputy governor Pichet Panapong.

Businesses in Phuket want to pivot the province to gastronomy, international education, marinas, medical services, meetings and conventions, sports, smart city development and tuna exports to reduce dependency on the tourism sector after it was severely hit by the pandemic.

While the sunset lights the sky over Phuket and our car swirls down a mountainous long road to Carnival Magic, it is like we are travelling through a wizardly land straight out of a fairy tale.

PHUKET: The annual Phuket vegetarian festival, which begins on Monday, is expected to attract more than 3 billion baht in visitor-spending this year, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.