UTF-8 Headaches Access to mySQL/PHP

Question

My mySQL database create shows

CREATE DATABASE `foo` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci */ 

The mySQL field collat

Answer 1

The issue was resolved by adding these queries to the connection:

mysql_query("SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci");
mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8;");

And THEN a call to utf8_encode() wrapping the output.

The function call ought not be needed given all of the headers and Content-Type settings...?