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Concept
Phuket province
Summary
Phuket (ˌpuːˈkɛt; ภูเก็ต, phūː.kèt, Bukit or Tongkah) is one of the southern provinces (changwat) of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, the country's largest island, and another 32 smaller islands off its coast. It lies off the west coast of mainland Thailand in the Andaman Sea. Phuket Island is connected by the Sarasin Bridge to Phang Nga province to the north. The next nearest province is Krabi, to the east across Phang Nga Bay.
Phuket province has an area of , somewhat less than that of Singapore, and is the second-smallest province of Thailand. The island was on one of the major trading routes between India and China, and was frequently mentioned in foreign ships' logs of Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English traders, but was never colonised by a European power. It formerly derived its wealth from tin and rubber and now from tourism.
There are several possible derivations of the relatively recent name "Phuket" (of which the digraph ph represents an aspirated /ph/). One theory is it is derived from the word Bukit (Jawi: ) in Malay which means "hill", as this is what the island appears like from a distance.
Phuket was formerly known as Thalang (ถลาง Tha-Laang), derived from the old Malay Telong (Jawi: ) which means "cape". The northern district of the province, which was the location of the old capital, still uses this name. In Western sources and navigation charts, it was known as Junk Ceylon or Junkceylon (a corruption of the Malay Tanjung Salang; Jawi: ; i.e., "Cape Salang").
The Portuguese explorer Fernão Mendes Pinto arrived in Siam in 1545. His accounts of the country go beyond Ayutthaya and include a reasonably detailed account of ports in the south of the Kingdom as well. Pinto was one of the first European explorers to detail Phuket in his travel accounts. He referred to the island as "Junk Ceylon", a name the Portuguese used for Phuket Island in their maps, mentioning the name seven times in his accounts. Pinto said that Junk Ceylon was a destination port where trading vessels made regular stops for supplies and provisions.
Official source
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