Surin Beach

This guide to Surin Beach in Phuket opens with King Rama the Seventh, who built a private beach house and the island's first golf course here in the 1920s, and follows the royal visits that continued through King Bhumibol's stay in 1959. It traces the beach's later transformation into Phuket's glamorous beach-club scene, and the government demolitions that followed. Come for the casuarina shade and the turquoise water a few steps from the pale sand.