A retired, 38-year-old Hong Kong broker is briefing his interior designer. 'I need the billowing stuff from that spread in Wallpaper magazine ... and those gigantic teak daybeds, only bigger. And Buddhas. Lots of them. The older, the bigger, the more spiritual looking, the better. And ...' He pauses. His tanned brow crunches with worry. There is a problem.
'Erm, people aren't going to think I'm a poofter, are they?'
'No sir, they will think you have style.'
'Good, good. That's what I want. Style.'
Welcome to Phuket's property boom, a distinctly Hong Kong-flavoured phenomenon of magazine dream homes and scale-warping private paradises. At the extreme end of this luxury market, buyers are dropping anything from US$5 million to $10 million in a gigantic game of show and tell. Some wags, noting the super-villas being arranged like a string of diamonds along Phuket's west coast, have dubbed the area the USA: the United Socialites of Asia. Others, noting the excess, and that these captains of industry, these traders and business warriors, will not stop competing, have given the phenomenon a different name. Welcome to Phuket, The Peak with a beach; Hong Kong's own 'BBQ of The Vanities'.
To get a feeling for it I was told to visit the Supper Club on a Friday night. Set away from the sea and a million miles from dazed package tourists and their metered women, the 'club' is the snug bar and rumour mill for the Thai island's property wheelers and dealers.
