Long before Phuket became the epicentre of tourism in Southeast Asia, and for a much longer period, the island was renowned around the region for something just as valuable, though much more destructive: tin.
Way back in prehistory, when weapons were still made of flint, some bright spark discovered that if you mixed tin and copper – both of them soft metals – you got something much harder. Bronze. With this you could make hard, durable weapons and tools. Phuket had tin ore and, unlike many other tin sources, Phuket’s tin was not associated with arsenic, making it a lot less dangerous to mine.