GREAT HOUSE OF THE OPIUM LORD, PHUKET TOWN, PHUKET THAILAND C1860

Built during the heyday of tin mining in the 1800s many coolies andChinese workers from the mines got hooked on Opium. This Great Housewas the epicenter of the trade. Today it houses a large collection ofAnimistic and Taoist shrines and one in particular to the Lord of Opiumand Ancestral worship. The ghosts of long gone coolies are said to inhabitthe house still and occasionally you can see them, on dark nights, at thewindows looking wistfully at the elephants, hoping to be carried away ontheir backs.