Cultural History of Phuket Town
The history of Phuket Town began at around 1800 when a ramshackle Chinese port town appeared at what is now known as Phoonpon Rd. The settlement rested on Klong Bang Yai, which in those days was the main canal supplying Kathu and other tin-mining areas with provisions. The place had all prospects for rapid development, but Burmese invasions slowed progress. It was not until the second half of the century when the island (and future Phuket Town) recovered from the desolation and it took another 50 years for the province to gain some wealth. The Penang Gazettereferred to Phuket Town in the last years of the 19thcentury as “a most rotten and unhealthy place … a collection of Chinese huts and hovels.”
The town began taking its current shape in the early 1900s, when shophouses replaced old shacks made from atapleaf and wood. These later gave way for more ornate architecture, following the prescripts of architecture from Penang and Singapore. If you want to credit this progress, without any doubt it should be given to Phraya Rassada, also known as Kaw Sim Bee, the legendary high commissioner of Phuket who transformed the province.
In the 16 years of his governance following his appointment in 1900, Phraya Rassada and wealthy Chinese families, supported by a healthy cash flow from a rapidly recovering tin price, turned Phuket into a flourishing provincial town. Paved roads with drains were built, running water and some sanitation were constructed along with the introduction of electricity.
In 1906 Phraya Rassada raised the capital required to start the Vachira Hospital and brought in a British doctor. Four years later the first Chinese school was opened and later several more appeared.
Phraya Rassada raised funds from all possible sources, including targeted taxes, donations from prominent mining families and even foreign capital, working towards development and improving infrastructure.
Under Phraya Rassada, concessions granted to foreign companies often meant the applicant agreed to donating towards social work or civil infrastructure. In 1907 he invited the Standard Chartered Bank from Penang to build a branch on Phuket Rd on the condition that they also build a police station opposite it, partly for the bank’s own protection, but also for that of the town. This police station, with its clock tower, still stands at the junction with Phang Nga Rd opposite the old Standard Chartered Bank building.
Similarly, when an Italian consortium applied for a mining license in Kathu, Phraya Rassada agreed they could have it if they built a cinema – and so the Charlermto Movie House was built. Its ornate stucco exterior can still be seen on the corner of Dibuk Rd and Yaowarat Rd opposite the Lock Tien Restaurant today.
The beautiful Sala Klang, or provincial hall, designed by an Italian architect, was built between 1907 and 1913. Other notable buildings of those days include the governor’s mansion, the tin mines department building, the old provincial court building, the prison and the colonial villa that today houses the Baan Klung Jinda Restaurant, which was built as the residence for the provincial treasurer.
Several elegant colonial mansions were also built by wealthy tin barons in this boom period. The huge mansion at 98 Krabi Rd was built by Tan Ma Siang, while Tan Peck Huat built the handsome villa that now houses the Thai Airways office on Ranong Rd.
Phraya Rassada had telegraph lines installed throughout Monton Phuket (“Greater Phuket”), and used his own steamer service to improve the mail service – at a profit to himself, naturally. Within a few years of his appointment, even the anti-Siamese Penang Gazettehad to admit that Phuket town had changed from a “rotten and unhealthy place … [to] … a place holding out attractions for capital and enterprise.”
In 1909 Crown Prince Vajiravudh, the future Rama VI, visited Phuket. After seeing the new villas, the rows of new white and pastel coloured shop-houses, the new cinema, the new brewery, the new ice factory, the many rickshaws and horse-carriages and even the four motor cars on Phuket’s roads at the time, he commented that “apart from Bangkok, there were no other places more highly developed in Siam than Phuket.”
Adapted with permission from A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Regionby Colin Mackay. Available from bookshops. See also historyofphuket.com.
