What are the most worthwhile things to do in Phuket on a first visit?

Old Phuket Town is the part of the island that has nothing to do with beaches. Thalang, Dibuk and Krabi roads carry rows of Sino-Portuguese shophouses built on tin-mining money, with arcaded fronts, shuttered upper floors and pastel stucco — architecture that belongs to the Straits Chinese world of Penang and Malacca rather than to central Thailand. The same community produces the Vegetarian Festival processions, and its food is a separate tradition from Bangkok's.

The Buddha on the Nakkerd hills, between Chalong and Kata, is the island's orienting landmark, visible from much of the south and reached by a steep road up from the Chalong side. Chalong's temple complex below it is the busiest working temple on the island. Both are open-air and both work in the monsoon, which is the practical case for having them on the list.

The boat day is the one that depends on the calendar. The limestone islands of Phang Nga Bay to the northeast, the Phi Phi group to the southeast and the Similans to the northwest are all day-trip distance in the dry season. The Similan Islands National Park is closed by Thailand's Department of National Parks from mid-May to mid-October, and Maya Bay has its own annual closed period, so the offshore half of a Phuket itinerary is seasonal in a way the rest is not.

The climb to the Chalong temple buildings goes up a flight of steps with a clock tower rising behind the roofline, and the gradient is steep enough that the island's flat coast disappears from view within the first dozen treads.

Southern Thailand has its own inscribed performance tradition. UNESCO added Nora, dance drama in southern Thailand, to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021 by decision 16.COM 8.b.42 at the Committee's 16th session. It is a southern form, not a national one, and encountering it at a temple fair or a local performance is the kind of thing a Phuket itinerary built around beaches will never produce by accident.

• Early — The Nakkerd hills while the air is still cool; the road up is exposed and there is no shade at the top.
• Afternoon — Old Phuket Town's shophouse grid, where the arcades give shade and the museums and cafés are in the same three streets.
• Full day, dry season only — One boat trip, chosen with the Similan closure in mind if the dates fall between mid-May and mid-October.

The national park closures are absolute within their dates and are not weather-dependent. West-coast beaches fly red flags during the monsoon when rip currents are at their strongest. Thailand's visa exemption scheme allows ordinary passport holders from 93 countries and territories up to 60 days, extendable by 30 through the Thai Immigration Bureau, which caps how slowly a first trip can be taken. The Level 2 areas in the State Department's Thailand advisory — Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and the Thai-Cambodian border region — are nowhere near Phuket, but they matter if the trip extends overland.

The Phuket food question in this group covers what the Old Town's Hokkien heritage actually put on the island's menu.