Phuket Days is a “must-read” for anyone who visits, lives, or plans a ride on this island roller-coaster. Knowledgeable, affectionate and funny, this new book - part story, part guide, opens up a wide-ranging perspective, with fresh insights into one of the worlds’ top tourist attractions. Based on the conviction that there is so much more to this tropical paradise than its tired stereotype as a pleasure palace, and unlike other “expat” accounts which concentrate only on its bar culture, “Phuket Days” teems with first-hand observations and opinions about “The Pearl of the Andaman” - its past, present and future. Taking the catastrophe of the 2004 tsunami’ as its point of departure, it runs the gamut from festivals and flora, ladyboys and “Babas”, social mores and soap operas, developments and driving habits, characters and criminals. “Phuket Days” tackles those questions visitors and “expats” argue about: What is the “Patong Flying Club” or the “noble lie”? Why is the island one of the world’s accident hot-spots? What happened to all that money you lavished on your Thai girlfriend? Why is wine so pricey and whisky and beer so cheap? Is Phuket an environmental disaster waiting to happen? What makes ladyboys tick? Episodes are linked by a story-line which follows the fluctuatiang fortunes of this nosey foreigner who makes Phuket his home –and destiny. Curiosity has been known to kill more than the cat....