Phuket Tourism: Has Phuket Been Ruined By Tourism?

[TheWhiteFella]

A B S O L U T E L Y !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! over built, empty shop houses, crowded beaches and roads !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jackr]

As someone else said, its the outsider natives that have screwed the place. Losing 95% of the stalls up on the cape and banning tour buses would be a start, but why would they want to do that and lose the all-important baht! That's what it all comes down to and there's no way to stop the rot once a place gets found out. Anyway, there's a nicer viewpoint overlooking the three three main beaches farther north and over Kata Noi, and many cracking locations on Phuket which haven't been trashed yet.

[Canexpat]

Although I had never experienced Phuket prior to 2010, as a first time tourist to Thailand my stay in Phuket was horrible. My first night in town I was assaulted and robbed by a Tuk Tuk driver. Even though I had the liscence of the Tuk Tuk, and eye witnesses to the crime, the police did everything they could to convince me my best course of action would be to forget it ever happened. According to every local I spoke with afterwards by pursuing charges against the said driver I would actually be putting myself at risk as the police collected bribe money from the Tuk Tuk mafia as the locals called them.

If I was to pursue charges against my assaulter, I was told I would most likely have my passport held by the authorities as the lawyers of the Tuk Tuk mafia dragged the case through the courts for many many months, and would most likely have to hire a bodyguard to ensure my personal safety.

I rented a motor scooter after this incident ( have never taken another tuk tuk since that first night in thailand and have been here for a year now ), and was constantly targetted by police simply because I was white. Even though I was never fined for anything, I was pulled aside on every roadblock I passed through, all my identification and motorcycle thoroughly examined as thai people were waved through with upto 5 people (aged 3 to 30) on a motorcycle, not one of them with a helmet.

Personally I found nothing charming about Phuket. Every beach resort city from Patong to Rawai smelled like a septic tank boiling over. Even water sellers had an open wild west type shootout over territory while I was there. For myself, Phuket will always be remembered as a place of infamy in my life.