Overview
The style came from Penang and Singapore with the traders — narrow fronts, long deep rooms, a covered five-foot way along the street — and the mansions behind the shophouses were built by the tin barons. Thalang and Dibuk roads hold the best of them. The town’s Hokkien Chinese population also brought the Vegetarian Festival, nine days of processions in October in which participants pierce their cheeks.
Highlights
Walk Thalang Road on a Sunday when it is closed to cars and becomes a night market. The mansions on Krabi Road, one of them now a museum, show what the shophouse fronts were hiding. Skip the beaches for a day; this is the part of Phuket that is not interchangeable with anywhere else.