Thai name: Mang Khut
Season: April to September
Southern Thailand (see entries on Surat Thani) is the home of the mangosteen, which appears on markets in May and continues through most of the rainy season. This delicious fruit has a thick, dark-red skin, inside which are creamy white segments with a sweet, slightly tart flavor; as a general rule, the more segments a mangosteen has, the fewer seeds one will find. A knife is used to slit the skin around the middle, after which it opens easily and the flesh can be eaten with a fork as a memorable after-meal treat.
There are several coral islands to the south of Phuket, the Similan Islands lie to the north west, and Phi Phi Islands to the south east.