Chinese New Year & Old Phuket Festival

Owning your own Phuket luxury property means you to get to experience Phuket with all its incarnations, inhabitants and traditions. A huge part of this includes celebrating Chinese New Year.

Thailand and Phuket are home to the largest overseas Chinese community in the world and are proud to be one of the most salient and well integrated communities with a population accounting for 14% of the Thai population (2012). The Chinese first came to Thailand in the 1600s but during the 1800s demand for tin surged and drew thousands of Chinese workers who eventually settled on the island. This period of industry and trade is the basis behind Phukets multicultural identity. The Phuket Mining Museum has exhibitions detailing how thousands of Chinese labourers came to the island and influenced the cultural history of Phuket.

Within Phuket the Chinese New Year celebrations are synchronised with the Old Phuket festival. As part of the celebrations roads are shut down nd temples decorated. In the public park off Phuket Road there is dragon dancing and traditional Thai dancing, as well as a large stage for toehr performances.  Many of the local Chinese houses are decorated with fruits and flowers and the traditional tray of 8 differing dried sweet fruits. In Old Phuket tours of the old architecture take place and demonstrations of old ways of life can be seen.

Of course there are also plenty of stalls and shops promoting their wares and offering tastings, with lots of traditional Thai food and drink on offer.

The Phuket Chinese New year festival and Old Phuket Festival will be held from 31 January – February 16 2014.