Phuket Thai Hua Museum

This guide to the Thai Hua Museum in Phuket Old Town follows the Hokkien Chinese families who crossed the South China Sea for the island's tin mines and built this schoolhouse in 1934, carving a bat of good fortune above its entrance. You'll hear how Chinese-language education here survived a 1941 government ban, then a different kind of pressure during the Cold War that pushed the school to rename itself Thai Hua. The guide also traces the building's fifteen empty years after the school moved out, before alumni brought it back to life.