Fun with MySQL collation, HTML charset and PHP utf8_encode

How do I avoid having so much fun using utf8_encode throughout my document? I was thinking of using output buffering and then making 1 call to utf8_encode, but I think a better question is, how do I stop using utf8_encode completely? The docs say that utf8_encode "Encodes an ISO-8859-1 string to UTF-8". So if I start with a UTF-8 string, why should I need to use utf8_encode? Am I really starting with a UTF-8 string if I set MySQL to utf_unicode_ci for that field, set the content type with header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); and set the HTML charset with <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> ? In MySQL 5.0.22, I had a Type text, Collation latin1_swedish_ci field (default settings, I believe) which I pasted the character "é" from the French Keyboard Viewer on a Mac Leopard machine into phpMyAdmin 2.11.1.2. This is an e with an accent on top (in case it is not rendered properly in your email client). Hmm, pulling the phpMyAdmin version reveals: MySQL charset: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8) MySQL connection collation: utf_unicode_ci I retrieve the field using mysql_fetch_assoc and display it in an HTML page rendered by PHP with and without header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); and <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> The document was originally saved in Dreamweaver 8 as a Unicode Normalization Form: C (Canonical Decompositon, followed by Canonical Composition) without "Include Unicode Signature (BOM)" -- great more encoding to worry about in my editor. The rendered view I see in Firefox 2.0.0.12 is a question mark "?" where the French character should have appeared. If I use utf8_encode, the character appears as it should. I had changed the MySQL Collation to utf8_general_ci and utf8_unicode_ci and I still have to use utf8_encode to see the character appear properly. Luckily I'm on PHP 4.3.10, so I can't see what mb_check_encoding would report -- if that would even help normally. Don't you just love Monday fun?