Drive the North East of Phuket

#phuket  #phuketvillas #northeastphuket

 

 

Travelling around the North East of Phuket, it is hard not to notice the green and pleasant land that makes up this part of the island. It takes me back to the time we first visited the island in 1988. Then the whole island was a green and pleasant land. There was little traffic and there was an easy going nature on the island as a whole.

Things change everywhere, not necessarily always for the better, but things change. I am not here to decry the way Phuket has changed, but to extol its beauty and especially the North East of Phuket and the hold it has over people.

 

 

 

  

 

There are countless small roads that meander through the area; you can almost always discover something new and exciting to look at. We like to drive a road that takes us from the 7 Eleven shop, at the Ao Por intersection. Turning left and north, passing the Supalai Resort and Spa, eventually arriving via Radi Medical, back on the Paklok to Mission Hills road. The views are spectacular, especially travelling the route in reverse, but it is difficult to find unless you have done the trip a few times.

The rubber plantations in the area are numerous, quiet and peaceful places, interspersed with cattle or water buffalo grazing. Occasional you see people wandering and tending either the trees or the pineapples that grow amongst the younger plantations. There is still plenty of jungle, standing vertically off the steep banks or rising out of the cuttings where the road winds, so dense in parts it is black as you try to look through the vegetation. Stop, take a breath and the occasional photograph, just to prove that it is all real and such places exist in the hustle that is now the south and west of Phuket.

You are taken from the heights of the surging landscape down to the sea and back again passing the occasional fish farm and local fishermen’s houses. The road can become overgrown bringing the access down to barley a cars width in parts, but still a pleasure to drive. The switchback both up and down reminds one of a roller-coaster ride, one you can control and stop when you desire.

 

 

  

I only hope the area stays the same, undisturbed peace…………North East Phuket