Thalang Road

Why go

If you see one street of the Old Town, make it this one. It is the main shophouse street, and the best place to understand what the town built on tin looks like.

Not for you on a Sunday evening if you dislike crowds: the street closes to traffic for the walking street and gets very full.

What you will find

A long row of restored shophouses, with cafés and small shops behind the facades. Look up at the upper floors, with their arched windows and shutters, rather than at the shop fronts. At street level, the front verandas form the five-foot way, a continuous covered walkway that keeps off the sun and the rain.

Soi Romanee, the lane on most postcards of the Old Town, leaves Thalang Road for Dibuk Road. On Sundays, about 360 m of Thalang Road becomes Lard Yai, the walking street.

The story

The Old Town was built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Hokkien Chinese merchants who came for the tin, most of them by way of Penang. The style is usually called Sino-Portuguese: Chinese shophouses with European touches such as arched windows, columns and stucco. Sources agree that craftsmen from Penang worked on many of the buildings.

Getting there

In the middle of the Old Town of Phuket Town, by road from the west-coast beaches. The whole grid is walkable: Krabi Road, Dibuk Road and Phang Nga Road are a few minutes away on foot.

On Sundays, the street is closed to traffic from the afternoon. Park outside the closed streets before 5 pm, for example at Wat Mongkol Nimit (paid, and it fills first) or at Limelight Avenue.

Before you go

The street is hot by day, especially from November to March, and many shops close in the hottest part of the afternoon and reopen around 4 pm.

Many shophouses are still family homes and businesses: treat the five-foot way as the private front step it often is.