Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong, properly Wat Chaithararam, is the largest and most visited of Phuket’s temples, with a three-tier chedi said to hold a splinter of the Buddha’s bone and a set of halls decorated in the full southern Thai style. It sits inland from Chalong Bay, a few minutes from the pier that most island boat trips leave from, which is why it appears on nearly every Phuket day-tour itinerary.

On admission, we are quoting rather than confirming. A website at wat-chalong-phuket.com presents itself as the temple’s own. It carries the temple’s postal address and telephone number, and it states plainly, in English and in Thai, that entrance is free and so is parking, with donations welcome. That is almost certainly right. What we could not do is establish that the temple runs that website, and our rule is that a source has to be the authority before its number goes on a page as fact.

Dress code. The same site asks for shoulders, chest and knees covered, and no sleeveless tops, short skirts or bare midriffs. That is standard for an active Thai temple and is worth following whatever the source.

One thing nobody official publishes. Whether the temple closes on Buddhist holy days or during its annual fair. We found no statement either way from the temple, the municipality or the provincial office of Buddhism, so if your trip turns on a particular morning here, telephone ahead.

What to expect. Firecrackers going off in the kiln by the shrine, a lot of gold leaf, and a steady flow of tour groups from about nine. Early morning is a different building entirely, or so we are told, which is the honest limit of this listing: we have not been.