It’s not yet light, but Jui Tui, a Chinese shrine in the Old Town of Phuket, is already a hive of activity. I’m standing in a massed crowd of devotees, sheltered beneath canopies of vermilion ...

THE GOOD Google Phuket and “tropical island paradise” and you’ll be over­whelmed. Even allowing for copywriters’ fondness for a cliché, the 645,000 hits can’t all be hyperbole.